Who You Choose To Be
by Laryna6
Summary: RMX AU. Rescuers must become anti-terrorists. A father must fight his own children. Nothing's as it seems, the ninja's not helping & the world is counting on X. X, who couldn't even figure out his own design well enough. X, who is not Megaman. Still...
1. Chaos, Panic and Disorder:

And this is 'feralverse.' I meant it to be utter crack, but it went and stole the plot ideas I'd wanted to use in a serious fic because they were shiny, and I decided to just let it because it turned out cool if not what I had in mind at all.

This is only the first part, it goes on for quite a lot more pages in the notebook. The style of this part is very confusing and random because I wanted to convey the sheer WTFness and lack of comprehension that the poor onlookers experienced. This is really stressful and their thoughts are racing, apparently on a course with hurdles since they're also jumping around like crazy. I swear the style is less confusing after this chapter: I mostly stick with X's POV and it's mostly chronological except when he's trying to remember stuff to help figure things out. It's a bit confusing, but that's because he doesn't understand what's going on either.

If you continue beyond this chapter you will be rewarded for your suffering by many random things including: ninjas, tabloids, TMI, aliens, _1984_ references, top secret pie recipes, X's throne, and the secret of Zero's perfect, tangle-free hair. And hopefully an explanation of what the hell is going on, although I'm not making any promises about that to either you or X because the only character who understands all of it has never, in any version of… Um, no, that would be a spoiler.

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own anything Rockman related except for some of Capcom's products. Like the OVA in which Blues briefly demonstrates the 1337 skills he considers superior to Dr. Light's.

* * *

When Zero had been found with all that combat skill and no higher brain functions it had been assumed that he'd been one of the poor souls built for the short-lived combat arenas. They were stamped out damn quick, but not soon enough for those whose lives had been gambled with and on. A reploid that was closer to a mechanaloid, barely sentient, wouldn't try to escape, and why else would he have all those fancy custom systems? Even if the bastard who'd built him had done the work himself, that sort of thing was really freaking expensive.

At least, that was the theory, but then it turned out that his main function, despite how he'd acted on his rampage, wasn't fighting. Arena combat might have been a secondary function, but he had another one. Bodyguard.

Reploids had free will. In fact they had even more free will than humans did since they couldn't change their instincts. Humans were sort of like the old Robot Masters had supposedly been, except without the risk of being reprogrammed. That meant that when Zero was running the OS Cain installed and was sentient he acted pretty normal. That was why it took Dr. Cain and everyone else so long to find out about this even though they'd been putting him under the microscope since he was brought in.

Oh, sure he was protective of X, but who wasn't? He wasn't just the father of them all but the nicest guy on the planet. They were protective of him and he was protective right back.

Which was actually the problem.

Zero's problem, on the other hand, or one of his many problems, was that when he was running Cain's OS he couldn't use any of those fancy custom systems.

When they put Zero in a very secure observation room and let his old OS reactivate so Zero could try to get control of it no one expected what happened. Nothing. Given the, oh, _trail of bodies _that had happened last time this was in control of Zero, and according to the reading the instant this one went on Zero's went off, this was weird. He just sat there calmly and looked at the observers without paying any attention whatsoever to attempts to talk to him. They'd wanted to see some of his abilities in action, but nothing happened.

The next time they tried this they got way too much of a demonstration. X had been there the first time to make sure Zero would be okay, but this time he'd had a meeting he needed to get ready for. The _instant_ Zero was switched over he dashed to the wall, cut a circle through three feet of alloy with monofilaments hidden in his _hair, _punched the circle through to the other side and went through the hole that left right after it. Nothing else slowed him down either and he was out of Irregular Hunter Headquarters embarrassingly quickly and frighteningly easily.

They'd used tracers, they had the third best security system in the world, they had teleport shields, and they had no clue where the most dangerous irregular in history was. While everyone was scrambling either to cover their asses, figure out what went wrong or plan how to recapture him when the carnage revealed where he was without getting more units wiped out there was a call.

X was utterly outraged that Zero had been allowed to wander around loose in this state, and could someone come to X's rooms to pick him up? His being here like this was making it rather hard to get work done. Also, what should he do to snap him out of it?

When panicked security charged in with charged busters they had an instant to be shocked by the sight of the dangerous irregular lying on the couch with his helmetless head in X's lap being pet like some homicidal psycho jungle cat before they were shocked unconscious. What was that blond mop, a Swiss army knife?

Zero then stalked over, crushed their busters, kicked them out the door, and laid back down to be pet.

X turned on his com so his voice came out the intercom next to his door, since he at least knew better than to startle Zero like yelling would have. He asked if they were okay, and what on earth they had been thinking?

They actually were okay after a few seconds to reboot, which was yet another really weird thing. "Thank you for not killing them," X as telling Zero. "Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." It was sort of like the tone of voice humans used to calm down children or pets.

Zero's reaction to the idea of the killing machine that he was needing a half-trained rookie to protect him, Dr. Light's creation or not, was a snort.

X laughed. "You're not worried about them? Well, it took Sigma to bring you here, after all." Was it a good idea to remind the irregular who had beaten him? What if he wanted revenge?

Another snort dismissed Sigma as a threat, let alone something he needed to get revenge on.

"Oh? If you aren't afraid of anyone, why won't you go back to normal?"

X thought Zero was the one who was frightened here?

The officers were wondering what to do. They would have tried sending in an unarmed and heavily armored medic who could try to shut down this personality again, but monofilament, for crying out loud. Who the hell was suicidal enough to use that as a weapon? The incredibly thin yet strong filaments of the material the space elevator used were bad enough without a mono-molecular edge: it was hard for even a reploid to break it. Add a cutting edge so sharp it was only one molecule thick, and you were looking at something where one slip could cut your head off.

It had industrial applications and some people had used it in the kind of security systems that guarded something so important they didn't care if people trying to broke in lived or died. It was rare now since the inevitable accidents had happened, but they still knew how to spot it.

Who the hell was crazy enough to install something like that onto somebody's head?

But then, to Zero's maker he'd just been a thing.

They had no idea why it wasn't cutting off the rest of his hair. Not to mention slicing his body into itty bitty pieces.

And X was petting that hair.

There was serious debate about if there was a way to kill Zero without harming X at that point. They didn't have much in the way of other options. Sending in a friend of Zero's to try to beckon him away wasn't an option because he didn't _have_ any other friends. He'd wiped out two entire veteran units and a ton of other hunters. They'd had friends who were Zero's enemies, fixed or not.

Some people had pointed out that Zero hadn't chosen to be nuts and tried to make friends with him. It didn't work because Zero was not willing to do anything but train, do other missions, and work himself into exhaustion so he could be in sleep mode without nightmares. Assigning him a light workload didn't help since he'd ask people if there was anything they could have him do. Telling them not to give him work made him go train. Barring him from the training rooms resulted in him doing agility practice and so on in the gardens.

He actively avoided any interaction that wasn't related to work. It wasn't that he hated people, it was a combination guilt trip and way to make it easier on everyone if he had to be taken down again. His efforts to atone and regret for what he had done earned him a lot of sympathy, and it was hard to hate someone who wanted to take paperwork off your hands.

Then Sigma had assigned him to train X because there was no one else that good who wasn't in command of something. With irregular activity on the rise there was no way X would let someone be pulled from an important job just to give him basic training. He felt terrible about being given that sort of special treatment. While how people treated him because he was a celebrity was quite often ridiculous and embarrassing, giving him special training because of who he was was actually vitally important. Not only would it make everyone else feel better knowing he could defend himself, but he was Dr. Light's creation and Megaman's younger brother. No living reploid had systems comparable to his. Special training would be well worth the investment.

Zero understood all of this, but objected very strongly to him being the one to train X because of the danger. What happened if he lost it during a training session with live weapons? Sigma had made it clear that was an order, X had asked what was wrong, and suddenly Zero had someone determined to help him develop some semblance of a social life that he was stuck with because of his commitment to the hunters.

The ones that didn't like him snickered. The fact he was clearly in torment made it hard be jealous of him. For them it would have been a huge honor. For Zero it was purgatory.

He was dragged to lunch in the actual mess hall. Forced to come to the official on-base parties (They improved teamwork. Seriously. Or that's how they were listed on the budget.) and other social events. He had to spend almost the entire workday with someone who was relentlessly optimistic in the face of all odds and determined to help him come of his shell no matter what.

Some people thought how hard Zero trained him was vengeance for this, but Sigma silenced the mutterings in the ranks by telling the base gossip that he'd ordered Zero to train X this harshly. X had to learn fast, or he might die. If he couldn't handle a drill sergeant, he hopefully would realize that was a sign he should go back to the lab. Where it was nice and safe.

Oh, so that was Sigma's plan.

X did very well though. This surprised those who had only met him briefly and come away with the impression that he was a hothouse flower, someone whose brightness and inner beauty would be crushed by the hard cold reality of combat. They either wanted to keep him sheltered or considered him a pansy who wouldn't last five seconds.

The base gossip had told him all about this and X had sort of liked the nickname because the word pansy meant thought. The flower was named that because of the resemblance to a human face, head bowed and absorbed in contemplation of something. Because of that it had been the symbol of some humanist and free speech organizations, and humanism wasn't a racial superiority thing as the name suggested, it meant believing in the worth of individuals.

Then he'd been told an old word for pimp was also descended from the name, and putting it on people's eyes made them lust after you like crazy. Then he'd gone on to mention that it could also mean effeminate or homosexual, and everyone knew young human chicks went crazy for prettyboys like X, and it went even further into the gutter from there until X found an excuse to escape before he blushed so much it stayed that way.

People also went nuts for celebrities, which X was, and heroes, which everyone assumed he would become. When you remembered that X was the brother of the legendary Megaman, his decision to fight to protect was almost what was expected of him, so people who didn't know him thought it was something natural instead of the product of something so terrible.

He'd joined to save lives: that was what the people who knew him knew. Nothing would stop him from trying to keep anyone else from dying.

These were the sorts of things that were running through everyone's heads as they waited, trying to figure what they could do and unable to stop thinking of why this was so dangerous and how terrible it would be to fail X.

Finally, it occurred to Rho to go drag Sigma out of his recharge capsule in the hopes he'd be able to deal with Zero again. Sigma had just gotten back from a mission before this started, was scheduled for fourteen more hours of rest and repairs, and disliked the concept of denying people the rest they needed to do their jobs just because other people weren't able to do theirs. It wasn't that being woken up made him cranky, he just tended to use people who woke him up for stupid reasons as examples to everyone else of why this was bad.

Rho being Sigma's brother didn't make him immune to this, it just meant that Sigma held him to a higher standard and so he'd really get it if this was pointless.

X being in trouble was something Sigma definitely wanted to be woken up for, so he got up, drained yet another energy tank to stave off the need for sleep and dragged the details out of Rho on the way while everyone thanked god he was going to take care of it.

When he arrived he looked cautious but not actually worried. Everyone watched as he stood in the doorway, letting Zero get a good look, and then dropped his beam saber. Instead of being killed by the irregular, he was granted entrance by a regal nod.

"Hmm." Sigma nodded. "I thought so."

"Thought what?" X just seemed curious, no more worried than Sigma was.

"When I fought him he attacked as long as I was armed but when I lost my weapon he eventually stopped attacking and ended up collapsing to his knees and clutching his head instead of finishing me off. The crystal on his forehead was glowing, so it seemed pretty obvious that it was why he was in pain. I didn't have much time to think because at that point if he attacked again I would have lost. I went with my gut feeling that the crystal wasn't why he'd stopped attacking but was punishing him for not killing me and smashed it. There was this big flash of light and when my optics started up again after shutting down to avoid being burnt out he was in sleep mode. I didn't knock him unconscious. He went to sleep."

"I remember, I helped Dr. Cain treat him when he was brought in. He was running on his last reserves. So you think this supports the hypothesis that the crystal was some kind of control device too?"

Sigma shrugged. "You're the scientist, but with the crystal he ran around killing everything in his path and without it he lies around and does the minimum necessary to maintain a peaceful environment. It's pretty obvious, although that doesn't necessarily mean it's true."

X sighed. "Dr. Light invented reploids so we couldn't be controlled the way his other children could. The idea of someone doing that to someone based on his design, on me… At least what we think it was wouldn't work on a normal reploid. We can rewire our pain systems so something like that wouldn't be able to work. Since Zero was only semi-sentient then he couldn't think of doing that." His eyes were full of pity as he looked at the person who was his teacher, commanding officer, and child. "Is that part of why you're so determined to help the hunters? So this won't happen again?" Something X saw seemed to confirm that. "Don't worry. It won't happen to any of us. It simply wouldn't work. You don't need to worry about us."

When X said that Zero's whole body stiffened and the security tapes showed a textbook example of the situation normally experienced only after a really wild party.

Where am I? Who am I lying on? What the hell did I do? All those worrying questions were made far worse by Zero's first sight upon regaining consciousness being his boss.

Zero scrambled to panicked attention while X heroically suppressed the urge to laugh.


	2. My Work Here is Done

Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman or anything related to it except various products, so please don't sue and deprive a customer of money to buy things like DMC4 from you with, Capcom.

Part two/?. This bit's mostly foreshadowing and explanation of how some things are/will be in this AU/how important X is. They vastly understate his importance to that society in the games, since they're focused on combat and most of X's power is just the opposite.

The remake of RMX1… I stole bits from it, but there were several things I don't like about it and the way they made Vile a Gary Stu was one of them. I already had some ideas of him that were based on the original version and random fan stuff I found interesting, so I went with that. After fitting them into this AU.

This chapter is a little dark. Of course, I don't know why I'm warning you about that. The games make this look like sunshine and daisies.

* * *

Later, the three people who had been involved in Zero's initial capture and treatment met to discuss what had happened and why X's words had been such a trigger.

"I don't think he came to me just because I was the only person I could find that he was friends with and felt safe around." There was more to it then that. "I kept reassuring him that he was safe and asking if he was scared, and there was some level of… Not fear per se, but worry, there. It wasn't himself he was worried about. If telling him that he wouldn't be able to be controlled again now that he was sentient was able to make Zero's OS reactivate and his old one go dormant, that would have happened even before I called."

"Do you have any idea what caused it?" That was something they needed to know, Dr. Cain suspected. "His original OS wasn't shut down. As you said, it went dormant. Zero's in medical right now, and as of when I gave up I had no idea of how to disable it again. If it wakes again, and it can, Zero's personality will be pushed under again and we would be looking at a repeat of this."

"Will that be so bad? The first time it was reactivated, he stayed put and just kept looking around at all the observers. Sigma and I were there. The key phrase wasn't the part about the control method being useless, the part that he 'tuned in' to and then turned off was that we were safe. While we were there and he could see we were safe the first time he was fine. When we weren't there he went looking. I think he came to be because, well, Zero is well aware I'm far less able to look after myself than you, Sigma." X smiled at his son ruefully.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. Zero may have amazed even me with how excellent he is at training others despite his aversion to people, but you've only been training a month. Megaman may," and Sigma thought this part was probably highly embroidered, "have been upgraded with super-powered ancient technology and just headed out to fight, but you're training to capture alive. Capturing people alive is harder then just blowing them up with powerful weapons. According to Zero's reports you're at the level of a normal trainee six months in. For someone who came in having only used his buster once, years ago, to get performance data on it, you're doing incredibly well."

Sigma, as the leader of the Irregular Hunters, gave lectures like this to underlings all the time. They had act professional now, and that meant not presuming on family relationships, but it was still a little embarrassing for X to get a lecture from one of his 'personal' children. Had it really been so long since he had lectured Sigma, Rho, and Ceta about not climbing all over the mechanaloid prototypes while they were in recharge?

Sigma seemed to feel the switch from X as father figure and expert medic to X as rookie in need of experienced guidance was also a mental 180 and returned to the topic. "As for Zero being protective of us, that's possible. If I did rescue him from what I speculated about, that might have made his… feral self think of me as an ally." Feral sounded so much better than the usual words. Sigma had been one of the two children X had been most hopeful would follow in his footsteps. He had, in a way, although not as expected. The training in logical thought that X had subtly given the young boy had helped produce a fantastic strategist.

He couldn't help being proud of Sigma, he just wished that Sigma hadn't needed to decide to dedicate his life to fixing the mistakes of others. Although really, he had been too active for the lab. Too proactive to just work, wait, and hope for a way to bring change instead of doing it himself. "You're his best friend, X. Interpreting his behavior as protective makes a lot of sense." Sigma would know about protectiveness.

"I agree, it fits the evidence we have." Dr. Cain therefore didn't see much point in talking about it anymore until they got new evidence. "I took a look at his hair. I'd dismissed it as ornamental when he was brought in. That could have very well ended up as a fatal mistake. There are at least twelve strand types there, and we haven't checked every one yet. Let alone the subtypes. Some of them can reconfigure themselves: I'm betting those are the monofilaments responsible for the breakout, but I can't trigger the change."

"Monofilaments?" It was so very X that the only person this made him worry about was Zero.

"It looks like it's incredibly difficult for it to happen by accident since I can't do it by trying to, thank goodness. And I found the taser types. It's not just electricity: that's just one subtype. I have no idea about most of the rest. A large amount are highly varying sensor types, but of what? And then there's a strand type that seems to do nothing but store various things, including sugar. I can't figure out what on earth that would be used for."

"Snacking? You'd be amazed what people bring along to capture missions. Stakeouts can get really boring." Reploids used fusion power, although they sometimes needed supplemental sources if they used up reserves doing things like repairing combat damage. Sugar did contain hydrogen, but the 'caloric value' of it was less than that of air, let alone water. "In the old days Ceta used to bring lollipops so the newbies had something to focus on besides worrying."

It really was wonderful that they could remember things like that now. Still, X had to return to the topic. "The only thing I can think of that reploids would need molecules with carbon to oxygen bonds for would be nanites." Nanites might be tiny machines, and most people didn't associate 'organic molecules' with machines, but the key word there was tiny. The reason those molecules were associated with living things, or at least the possibility of them, was that they were very amazingly suited for so many things on that level that it was hard to imagine life arising that didn't make use of them, or at minimum evolve into doing so. Life on earth had theoretically descended from spontaneously arising organic molecules that did things because of the way random chance structured them. They were just that good at it.

"I thought of those possibilities. Sigma, while reploids have two taste bud sets, one for 'useful' intake and one for 'human-style' intake, this is a blend of things that would taste wonderful to one and terrible to the other." X wasn't the only one who had lost a potential protégée. It was even worse for Cain because he'd lost his son as well as his grandson to the rescue side of the hunters, and Pi, well… They just couldn't share a lab without driving each other insane, so he'd gone to a university instead of being trained by his grandfather. "And X, why would he want nanite material reserves in his hair?"

"Perhaps he could use his hair to place large amounts of specialized nanites on areas needing repair that his internal systems are having difficulty with?" Sigma spoke up, again, intrigued. When you'd founded a semi-para-military group to bring insane people in alive to get medical help, you could always use better first aid.

"He doesn't have the delivery setup you'd want for that. There are gaps along the strand that can be entered, but no internal setup for creating nanites. Gaps to be entered by nanites already in his hair to get materials to make more. Hair care nanites." Eureka. "That explains so much. I had long hair before it became far too much trouble to deal with on digs. It just amazed me that Zero can let it flop around like that without having to constantly stop to brush out tangles."

Since Sigma had short hair even before he'd chosen this path and gotten a redesign into a body type more suited to combat, "I've never had to deal with that, but several of Vava's staff have raided his rooms trying to figure out what shampoo he uses and only found standard issue." 'Staff' as opposed to troops. Sigma might be stuck with general by now, but that didn't mean he liked the new military rankings they'd had to adopt. "They seem to think he's hiding his supply of some incredibly exclusive brand to keep it from being stolen."

"Really?" X asked, amazed. People thought Zero would go to the trouble of selecting a rare and unknown shampoo when he hadn't even gotten an armor redesign despite the bad memories?

"Have you met Vava? He used to be the restraining influence there. Apparently pranks are the norm for Special Ops types. They're good practice in an environment where mistakes aren't fatal." Sigma seemed to think X was surprised by the lack of professionalism sneaking into someone's quarters showed. X, however, had raised several children and was used to this sort of thing. The fact that he'd only built and raised a fraction of them didn't mean that he didn't consider all reploids his children. Although thank goodness that most of them were more mature than Theta. Blue hair dye so that he matched his armor indeed.

"Vava is the one who was designed to look like the bounty hunter in those movies, right?" Another thing the old guard were fighting against tooth and nail was the idea of uniforms.

"It's actually custom armor. His main cover identity was a huge fan."

X's father senses were tingling. "What's wrong?" Sigma might be above him in the Hunter chain of command, but he still was X's baby.

"He's been acting erratically since 'Vile's' cover was blown. It's not just that he always wears the armor when he's really a Han Solo fan." Sigma himself loved that series, although he didn't have a favorite character as such. "It's the whole persona. He can't seem to keep from slipping into it. Everyone's trying to help him break out of it when it happens, keep it from happening again and cover up for him, but it keeps getting worse and at some point he's going to slip far enough to do something I can't pretend I didn't notice." He shook his head sadly. "I've been visiting him when I could: the founding Hunters have to stick together with the organization's numbers exploding like this, and I think it helps, but I don't know what else I can do."

"I wish I could help you." Dr. Cain already knew even though X didn't? He had been that out of the loop since what happened? At least they were letting him know now, letting him be burdened with others' cares again. "I've checked his systems several times and can't find any problems that I know of. Nothing's degenerating over time, and his mental state is… If it were a factory defect it should have shown up long before now. My best guess is that this is a psychological problem specific to reploids. It's similar to some case studies that were published, but since you're such a new race there really isn't much that's been established as effective treatment yet."

"Psychological problem?" X tried to think. "Oh. Heteromensa?"

Sigma, on the other hand, had no idea what Cain was talking about. He explained, "The reason reploids have absolute free will is that they aren't bound by programming or instinct. They can alter their minds as they please, although they can only do so if they truly want to. New reploids do this constantly as they learn who they are and what they want to be. Your father, on the other hand, does so rarely and usually only small changes." Usually. Being here, talking about Zero's mental issues and now Vile's: they were skirting the edges and X wondered if this was somewhat of a test. Dr. Cain didn't think that way but Sigma the strategist did. He wouldn't have let the conversation dwell on Vava's changes, something so close to the delicate issue of X's own recent changes, unless he had a good reason.

"Oh. So heteromensa's the technical term for Vava having to act like his cover persona for so long and establish those behavior patterns so firmly that without a proper resolution he can't delete them? Vile's cover was blown. Vile wasn't able to do the job the persona was created for because Vava wasn't able to do a good enough job of being Vile. Vava," how to put this? "He's terribly guilty over what happened. On some level he wants to be Vile again, to do a better job of being Vile, to be enough like him they couldn't have told the difference and known to feed him false information. Everyone's trying to remind him of who he is and that he's a worthwhile person to be, but I think he's deleting everything that makes him Vava. Unless we can stop it I don't think there'll be anyone left in there but Vile very soon." Sigma rubbed his bald head. "She wouldn't have wanted that."

Oh. That was the point he was making.

"If they're that hazardous to mental health on top of all the other hazards, I think I might have to put a stop to undercover operations altogether." And there was the subject change.

"I noticed I'd been receiving less information lately. What's the problem?"

"Um, should I be here?" X asked. "I thought I was only here to discuss Zero." I'm not the co-head of the medical department anymore. I'm only a trainee. I don't have the clearance for this and I don't belong here. Not anymore.

Sigma gave him a look, a commanding officer to trainee look. "I seriously doubt you're a security risk. You've chosen to fight to protect people. The best way to do that is to keep the fight from happening at all, or at least know how to end it as quickly and painlessly as possible. I assigned you here for the entire meeting. Your job right now, Trainee Light, is to watch and learn, unless you do have anything to contribute."

"Yes, sir." X's smile was wry. He considered using Sigma's own title, but that was going a little too far. General had just been a semi-irritating nickname when X and Cain had moved the lab here to fix captured irregulars. Now, he was having to become an actual general.

"As terrible as his situation is, Vava is one of the lucky ones. At first, they just tried to kill undercover agents they discovered, and usually weren't that good at it, due to the insanity that caused them to not accept help." The Irregular Hunters had been founded to drag those whose factory defects were so destabilizing that they refused treatment out of paranoia, inability to understand what was going on, or whatever before they died of some physical defect or their insanity caused them to do something irrational enough to kill them. If they weren't going to fight to avoid capture then the Hunters didn't need to be called in. Zero was simply the most effective at doing so they'd encountered.

"In the really old days, Irregulars were customs like Zero, attempts to improve on reploid design that went wrong: dangerous, but working solo and too irrational to pose a serious threat. Then we had the large increases from factory owners cutting corners, like not using high-precision... You did get groups from that, and often there were some among them rational enough to avoid notice: that was when criminals started getting involved. Usually one of the first corners cut was the library database. Irrationality, dislike of the world, lack of knowledge of basic logic… Reploid crime is low because of 'enlightened self-interest:' things that are considered wrong by most people are usually bad decisions to make for some actual reason. Those irregular bands were ripe for the picking, and that didn't help public perception of reploids."

Sigma, the genius strategist who had to fight the crimes they committed, wished those fellow reploids hadn't been built that way. They were making his species look stupid. "That was when traps started to be laid. Criminals are fundamentally irrational, or they would realize how bad a decision it is to become a criminal, but they tend to be cunning despite not being wise. I still don't know how they spotted him…" In any case, "There's another group getting involved now. Ideologists."

"What?" Cain apparently hadn't know about this either.

"We've been getting more and more irregulars, and what happened to these newbuilt babies is so terrible that a lot of people agree something needs to be done about it. Some of them join the Hunters, others vote… some of them are joining the irregulars. It used to be nice, helpful people… sometimes they managed to do something for them, but usually if they were willing to listen to people like that they'd have come in to us for treatment. Lately, though, we're getting some people who aren't so nice. That are just as angry as the irregulars are that society let this happen to them. Human society. We've got everything out there from anarchists to racists. Criminals want to commit crimes and get away. These ones want attention, want to strike back just like some of the irregulars do and since they're theoretically rational they can _plan_. That's why terrorist incidents have been on the rise lately. At first it was just them, now they've got people to plan, and now they're starting to coordinate between groups and get organized. That means getting dangerous. An organized force is never outnumbered by an unorganized one: that's a basic concept. Now that they are one, we hunters a have lost a huge advantage."

Sigma the strategist had even more bad news. "We," he and the other three, "founded the Hunters as a medical rescue group: stopping rampages and saving helpless victims on both sides. Everyone was in favor of that. Now practically all of what we do is anti-terrorism, and even though we're mostly reploids we're starting to be called humanity's attack dogs, or something like that. Historically, this kind of movement has been even harder on 'class traitors' than the actual enemy."

"Is there anything we can do to fix that?" Dr. Cain asked. Hesitantly, he suggested, "I suppose, if it would help… It probably doesn't look good to them for a human to be in charge of treatment. There are some good people at the university, Pi and his fiancée among them. I could retire from the Hunters and allow them to take over here." It wasn't like Dr. Cain didn't have other places begging for him to come there.

"I really don't know. It might even be counterproductive, like an admission of guilt." Sigma rubbed his head again. "Not to mention that you're the best in the field." And the poor reploids the hunters brought in often needed the best.

It really was making it difficult for everyone that X had chosen to fight. If he was still co-head Dr. Cain could have just retired without it being a complete changing of the guard. Also, while there was a reploid there, especially X, people would have been more reassured. Although it was nonsense to distrust Cain like that, so who knew.

Still. There were other doctors. There was no one else like him.

"The situation is changing day by day," Sigma continued, "We need intel to figure out how they think, how to talk to them and who to talk to and we can't get it. One agent walked into a meeting and she swears they jumped her as soon as she closed the door behind her. She might have been nervous and slipped up somehow, but she only got out of there because she had flight capability and they didn't. A lot of them aren't getting out of there. The more they catch, the more nervous every other agent gets and the more mistakes our people make out there the more they catch."

"I hope this isn't true, but as Vava's condition is what it is… Could 'Vile' be selling identities?"

"No." Sigma shook his head. "I put in restrictions on information access as soon as criminals got involved to prevent that sort of thing, and it's been ramped up like crazy since this started. I've had ten people lost when no one but their contact had any idea who they were pretending to be."

"Perhaps there's a weakness in training somewhere that could be fixed?"

"I've got the best people I can going over that with a fine toothed comb." Sigma missed Vava. "At this rate, we're going to lose all personal intel. That leaves intercepted messages, and that's way down. Someone seems to have done their research." Damn it. "Some of the UN people are justifying their funding by trying to see if there's some coded transmissions hidden in atmospheric noise or anything like that, but if they've switched to coded hand-carried messages we're out of luck. You can't search every traveler, especially when you have no idea what to look for. Exchange a list of meanings in advance, and someone giving their girlfriend a rose could mean 'the attack is on for tomorrow.'"

"You look terribly worn out by all this." X shut his mouth. A father could recommend his son take a break for a bit to relax and be able to think more clearly when they went back to work. A trainee should maybe not have even said that. "I'm sorry." He wanted to comfort his son, but…

"If I wasn't already bald, I would be within a week." Sigma shrugged: nothing to apologize for. X's decision was X's decision, and it was better than the first one he'd made after what had forced this change.

"I wish there was something I could do." Oh, there was, wasn't there. X smiled affectionatly: clever boy.

"You are a symbol, X. People listen to you, and you mean what you say. If we do manage to establish that we really are a neutral party, that means battles with these new irregulars that won't have to be fought, and possibly even an opportunity to get them to sit down and negotiate." Sigma had to admit X had caught him, but he was proud of his father for that. He had faith that his father could and would do this, protect his children. Without fighting. If he were to decide to be a spokesman for peace between human and irregular, that meant that fighting the irregulars personally would be counterproductive.

Just like staying in the lab would have been helping without having to fight. X hated the idea of fighting, hated the idea of hurting his children. Sigma was offering him yet another way to save his children's lives without putting himself in danger or having to…

Yet someone had to fight. "I will do what I can."

Dr. Cain wanted to argue, but he'd tried everything before.


	3. Knowledge is Power:

…aaaand here's the next bit of Feralverse. Many, many more bits to go.

The Megaman Megamix manga has been licensed and is being published! Go read?

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for products purchased from Capcom, the rightful owners. Please don't sue: you're getting a lot of my money as it is.

* * *

"Hello," X said, and waved when he saw that every head in the training room had turned towards him as soon as he walked through the door. He knew all the regulars, since Zero was very fanatical about training, but there were people in here that never even used the training rooms… oh, dear.

Kilroy was here.

And his instructor wasn't. There had been a message from Dr. Cain when X woke up telling him that Zero had been released, and since there was no message from Zero X had assumed training would continue as usual. Neither rain nor… what was that quote? "Where's Zero?" he asked.

Everyone looked at Kilroy, which was never good. It appeared that this was something that they didn't want to break to X and that Kilroy would get them for if they denied him the opportunity to do so. Kilroy was amused. The base gossip being that amused was never a good sign. "On the cover of quite a few tabloids."

"What?" Zero had been trying to teach X to expect the unexpected: apparently he needed more practice.

"Did he purr?" Kilroy's pause to give X time to sweat before the next tidbit was interrupted by Trace, number ten on X's mental list of people with crushes on Zero it might be worth trying to set him up with once Zero was worn down a little farther. Boosting Zero's self-esteem was a Herculean task and X wanted both reinforcements and someone to take over once X completed training and started to be given assignments.

"No." X was sorry to disappoint. "I was hoping he would too, because that would have been very cool and do I want to know about those tabloids?" Kilroy, X had figured out after the 'pansy' conversation, was best treated like Rho, although for different reasons. Rho tended to tease to get reactions: if you got the joke it wasn't on you and that defeated the purpose, so he would stop. Kilroy, however, did it to play and liked it if you played along, as that meant a better game for both of you.

"Someone leaked security camera footage, and then it got altered. By the tabloids, anyway. The serious newsies didn't." Which Kilroy, shaking his head, clearly considered a terrible waste. Kilroy was a disseminator of information, trying to be serious took all the fun out of it.

"Really, really hot pictures," Trace confirmed eagerly, clearly hoping there were more and they would be shared.

"The whole world is waiting to hear the juicy details." Oh, dear. Grinning Kilroy.

"Oh dear. I hate disappointing people." X sighed.

"Pi's going to be really disappointed. They grabbed him to interview about this, and it was news to him. You said nice things about Zero, but you say nice things about the cafeteria food." Kilroy sighed. "He'd love it if you and Zero had a double wedding with him and Doppler. Do you think you two could hook up in time?"

"I don't think so. It would be against regulations, for one thing."

Kilroy snorted. "X, do you know how long your kids, no, the whole world, has been waiting for you to get laid? If Sigma can ignore pie fights in the cafeteria, he can… pay very close attention to but lie about you learning how to use a beam saber from Zero."

"I'm still working on the standard buster, though. No individual weapons until after you've mastered that is Sigma's own policy. I suppose I could ask Zero about it, though. Do you know where _else_ he is?"

"A very dark place."

X tried again. "No, I meant where his body is."

"Me too. It's dark under all that armor. When you get there I'd tell him to take it off, because you're really not supposed to wear it in bed and wreck the sheets. Although he might have taken it off under them, I don't know. They're pulled up over his head and all the lights in his room are off. He's just been lying there for hours. I'd head right on over there if I were you."

Kilroy's innuendo-laden tone implied that Zero was lying there waiting for X to come by and, well, but they both knew that it was shame and not desire that made Zero hide from himself and the world. "Kilroy." The shift in X's tone from simple, innocent straight man to elder was very apparent to the watchers, who suddenly remembered that this was X who they were eavesdropping on and started attempting to act mature. "Who leaked the footage?"

Okay, yeah, everyone but Trace and another regular scrammed after that. There was a full-on inquisition over that: Sigma was _not happy_ about someone breaking the law and releasing Irregular Hunter footage related to classified research to the media. The fact that the victims were his father and someone who he not only felt he owed his life to but was very mentally unstable meant that heads were really going to roll.

Kilroy watched his audience go mournfully, then did an expression one-eighty and smirked at X. "Not me, that was Rho. I may have accidentally given him the idea, though. What I said was, 'Boy, would the media have a field day with this!'"

"And you're telling me about Zero to apologize for that?" Kilroy 'worked for' Rho, although Kilroy had been here since the old days when there was more of a 'work with' type of organization. They were personal friends and Kilroy wouldn't go over Rho's head to Sigma.

"Yeah, and also because I'm worried about the guy. He's emo enough as it is, and he went and huddled up there when they let him out of medical, before any of these even hit the presses. I mean, going after him is like hitting the broad side of a barn, but I'd like to keep him around in case I ever get that bored."

"…Oh."

"We may soon have evidence that it is indeed possible to die of embarrassment." Oh, drat. The other training room regular that had stayed wasn't Naiad. Her twin's sensual voice, also subsonic-enhanced so that everything sounded like song, dripped with naked venom.

"Nereid, do you always have to be such a brilliant ray of sunshine?" Oh, Kilroy had gone into bitch mode right back. To Nereid, it must sound like he was chiding her for interrupting him when he was the one conducting the psychological warfare against her enemy's ally right now, thank you so kindly for waiting your turn.

Normally, though, Kilroy liked other people joining into the game. That he was trying to shut her down meant this wasn't just a game. "…I think I'll head down there now."

"You do that. Think fast!" Kilroy wasn't a training room regular, but he did come by for target practice sometimes. Usually verbal, but he wasn't above using actual pointy things to make a point. This, though, was just an access card labeled 4267, X saw when he grabbed it before it hit his face. "Door lock override. I tried, but we're not allowed to disable cameras in any room Zero's in while another person's in there. Former irregular plus traumatic experience plus utterly wicked weaponry," the tone Kilroy used to convey his lust for the coolness mimicked Trace's sighs of lust for the hotness, "equals a very high threat level, and we have regs nowadays." That Rho wasn't willing to break for Zero.

"What I can do," Kilroy told him, and this was Kilroy being professional, or as close as he got to acting like the professional he was, "is have a program do the watching and only alert me if something goes horribly wrong, which is the standard setup anyway. I'll wipe the footage later, unless there's a catastrophe. One that involves blood and other kinky stuff. Try to avoid that. If you get killed, Rho will be no fun for days, and if it's the other kind of catastrophe that gets you all clawed up, I'll have to replace my optics. You're close to my type, but Zero just turns me off."

What? Oh. Pun? Well, Zero had been acting catlike, and they both used the male pronoun… innuendo related to human sexual practices lost some zing when you were talking about reploids. Still, X blushed far too easily.

"Let us know so I don't wipe it if that happens again without anything violent enough to trigger the program to alert. I mean this whole thing is because you need to get a handle on that." 'That?' Kilroy was using an euphemism? _Kilroy _was?

That really drove home how delicate the subject was, how terrible the memory. "I understand, and I'm sure he would too. Thank you."

"Meh." Kilroy shrugged. "A bunch of us weren't very happy with the idea of waking up the thing that killed a lot of very cool 'ploids, but my opinion is better the devil you know."

"If he can't handle it, we might get our hands on those tricks of his they want badly enough to let a dangerous creature like that live even sooner." By dissecting him. Oh, all the different shades of hatred and contempt in that melody, and the thought of the pain it must have taken to bring about that darkness made X's own heart cry out.

"Damn it, Nereid!" Kilroy was, for once, not joking around. This was the bark of a senior (non-) officer. "Naiad might have been married to one of the Garmers, but that was uncalled for!"

Nothing but a shrug, frozen-over sea-green eyes broadcasting the same contempt as her voice. "Report to the cafeteria," Kilroy told her, equally coldly, and she left without even replying.

"I'll get going, then." X couldn't stand to stay here after that. He'd tried to make her see that Zero wasn't evil, but even though Naiad had forgiven him she wouldn't. She only came here to make sure that Naiad wouldn't meet the same fate as her husband, and her eyes were daggers in Zero's back. He could not make her see, Kilroy couldn't jolly her out of it, and even reminding her of her duty as an Irregular Hunter did nothing.

Kilroy didn't say goodbye, instead following X out the door, fuming. "Damn it, what is it with everyone lately? It's like I'm in that movie with the pot people, only cranky instead of happy."

"Pot people?"

"The plant aliens in that one movie in the marathon the sixth had a couple months ago. The one where Hoe got really drunk and punched me?"

"Oh, yes." He'd let him, but then Kilroy had admitted that he'd deserved that, and it had been worth it. Pansy wasn't the only word Kilroy knew odd meanings for, although actually he'd been talking about Hoe without the e. "I think those were pod people."

"Whaaaatever." Kilroy's eye roll indicated that hadn't been an accidental error, but he didn't feel about letting X in on the joke at the moment. "I'm in security, and we see a lot of things. A _lot_ of things." Kilroy grinned at the thought of a few juicy ones. Oh yeah, hadn't there been a point to this conversation? "Anyway, we see a lot, and I've never seen things this bad. All you newbies may consider me a relic from the age of the dinosaurs, but there was a before I joined up and Rho told me that when the Hunters started there weren't any incidents among troops for six months! I used to be so bored on my night shifts I had nothing to do but read old novels and tabloids! Now, though, it's like everyone's edgy, and ticking each other off, and they tick back… I mean, people are starting to take me seriously! I got on Hoe's case about the gears and potatoes thing eightish months ago, and he was laughing like crazy!"

Pouting, Kilroy crossed his arms. "It's getting worse out there, and they can't leave it out there. It's getting so they aren't sure anymore, and they all joined up to be the good guys. Everything might be going gray, sure, but that's no excuse for taking it out on someone trying to lighten it up…" Oh. "Sorry for ranting at you, but Rho's sick of hearing it and I thought you might need the heads up."

"I didn't think things were that bad." That was the corridor to Kilroy's station up ahead, X noticed sadly.

Yet Kilroy didn't seem to notice it. "Yeah, 'cause you're you and the children try to be on their best behavior. Most people don't think things are this bad. But security, we see a lot, and they are."

"Thank you for telling me." Kilroy was one of the only ones irreverent enough to 'tattle' like this. Not to mention disobey the base-wide conspiracy to not burden X. As the base gossip (before things got serious, there had been semi-serious discussion of making it an official position with salary), Kilroy made it his job to know where all the bodies were buried or couples were making out and tell people what they needed to know. And often a lot more than they wanted to know.

"If you're wondering why I'm following you, it's because you're a kidnap risk." Kilroy winked.

"You're right, I was wondering, and I didn't know that." Kilroy was the only one who would tell him if it could be avoided.

"Indoors isn't an issue, but Zero's in one of the family housing buildings to be isolated – lucky, do you know how hard it is for a single to get one of those love nests? – and you go out into the open to get to them."

"So I should get someone for future trips?"

"No way. I have dibs on being your stalker. This is going to be gold."

"What will you do while I'm there?" Please, please, please don't let him relieve his boredom by joining in and needling Zero! That was X's prayer to any god that would listen. Kilroy claimed that his short attention span meant he was built for camera monitoring: he'd glance at all of them for anything interesting but wouldn't have his gaze caught for more than five seconds, unless someone had something new but he'd seen it all.

"Oh, I'll just hang around. You won't even know I'm there. Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of shutting up. Silence is a job requirement for we ninja."

"I was wondering about that. I thought your body was one of those ironic mismatches you sometimes get." Or that Kilroy had gotten remodeled into a ninja because it was both ironic and an excuse to play with sharp things.

"No, I was built to be a ninja. I even went and trained under the Wise and Ancient Snark-Fu Master."

"Why Kilroy, then? It's not Japanese."

"Because sneaking into places people don't want you to be and drawing that little picture of the face peeking over the line with the caption 'Kilroy was here," is one of those little things that make life worthwhile." Ah, good memories. "It's my thing. The Master does this thing where he just starts whistling like it's a walk in the park, and then they're all, 'How long have you been there?'"

"I think I'd like my 'thing' to be not getting shot."

Kilroy snorted with laughter. "Char would so be calling you a wuss right now."

"That's your brother, right?"

"Right. He got this bodyguard gig because when he went to check out the add the guy's sister put the smackdown on him with a titanium broom for trying to steal her top-secret pie recipe, and he found this totally hot." Clearly that was something Kilroy had told so many people that he had it down pat. The next bit mimicked the carefree old gossip tone, but there was a hint of more there. "He was worried he'd be bored out of his skull hanging around yet another lab, but it turns out the guy's doing something well-funded with lots of exciting world trips to gather highly unusual data, so it's all good."

Well funded meant that someone considered it worth the money. Exciting for Char, who according to Kilroy wasn't interested in anything but fighting, preferably with explosions (or, seemingly, pie) involved? Unusual was a synonym for Irregular… "You know, Killroy, it's very interesting how you convey information." As opposed to things that everybody other than the person he was letting in on them already knew.

"If you're loud and obvious, people don't pay any more attention to you than you force them to." And boy, Kilroy got a kick out of attention-grabbing. "If you're subtle and sneaky, people pay attention to figure out what you're up to. I learned this from the Master."

"You mentioned him earlier. Does this mean you want me to ask about him to trigger the next long, wandering, but entertaining topics that will eventually convey an important point by the time everyone but the person whose attention you have grabbed has tuned out the latest Kilroy meander to attend to their own business, or dismissed it as just more valueless entertainment?"

"Ah, you've figured out the code. And you waited until we were outside and eavesdropper free except for the cameras that send data to my station and my station only. Go you!" Kilroy clapped.

"Actually, that hadn't even occurred to me."

"X, X…" Kilroy waggled a finger at him. "I am deeply disappointed in you. A celebrity with your legions of stalkers really should have learned more caution by now. I see that I'm going to have to step up your training. I suggest you start carrying turpentine." Kilroy, when he wasn't at his station, tended to wander around the building, spreading gossip and throwing water balloons at people who weren't on their toes. Paint balloons were normally reserved for security officers sleeping on the job: he had to get permission from Sigma to use them on field hunters.

"Kilroy, this is Irregular Hunter Headquarters." Why would he have to worry about the cameras here?

"It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you." Kilroy sighed. "I keep nominating that when we change our motto every year. Maybe now that there actually are people out to get the hunters I'll get votes." He looked entirely too happy about this.

"That's not a good thing…"

"Well, it's the way it is."

This made no sense. Someone from the early days, someone who remembered when things weren't this way shouldn't have this fatalistic acceptance. No, this idea that people only out to help their fellows having enemies was the way of the world instead of the product of a terrible misunderstanding that would surely be fixed soon. "Maybe, but they'll go back to the way they were _someday_."

"Doubt it." Just another shrug, Kilroy wasn't interested in this conversation. In a conversation about the future of the Hunters he had been an integral part of for years?

" Of course they will!" How could Kilroy seriously believe that this irrational hatred, this, this racism, would persist?

Kilroy gave X a _look_, and X knew he was thinking something along the lines of, "What a starry-eyed, quixotic, illogical, idealistic idiot who is going to get himself killed because he refuses to accept reality and would rather live in a dream world where everyone is secretly nice, there are always happy endings, things are in easily distinguishable black and white, and you can do things that contradict the laws of physics just by believing you can, or trying hard enough, or some BS like that." The exact word used was, "Lightbot," but then, to Shadowman's family, the words X thought of were most of the definition of that term.

Kilroy said nothing, because the rest of the definition was, "that you can't help but like and wish they could keep that bubble you envy them for."

* * *

This makes a bit more sense in the context of the manga.

Seriously, go read the thing. It contains the plot and concepts you wish had been in the games, although except for the first one it's mostly stuff that happened in between the games, like Dr. Cossack writing a book arguing for robot/human equality, peace, friendship, and so on. Manga Dr. Cossack would so not like the version: the Skullman manga story is a very sad parallel with , although in context of an earlier chapter Dr. Cossack hid him to keep him from being destroyed because he was a warbot. There's some stuff in there about unconscious racism: he argues for equality, but did he seal him away to protect him or not to have to look at him?


	4. Power Corrupts

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except a lot of products purchased from the real owners: Capcom. Why sue when you're getting my money as it is?

Part 4/? I really should leave you hanging longer. Especially as I have a midterm on Wednesday. Sadly, it's hard to study MSEs and all the other ANOVAy-things when you're resisting the urge to fly across the country to bitchslap someone. Or strangle. Whichever.

* * *

Being looked at by Kilroy like that, seeing Kilroy decide not only not to say something but to actually keep it hidden instead of broadcasting it by other means (you know what I mean? Wink wink nudge nudge) was so very odd, and X really had enough oddness to deal with right then, between Zero's other half and the tabloids and Rho's tendency to find underhanded methods of getting back at people like saying cruel things deliberately to see the hurt in their eyes having made him do something so terrible it made X worry about having failed as a parent… "So, about your 'Master?'"

"Yeah," and Kilroy went right back to normal. Well, normal for Kilroy. Emotional one-eighties weren't normal for most people. It was that Kilroy's rapid expression changes had always been acts, sure, but X had assumed the cheerful manipulativeness was the baseline. He chided himself for thinking that. Kilroy wasn't a shallow person; of course he had emotions other than his usual happiness that weren't masks. "It turns out he's the scientist guy in question. Found that out when I went to visit. Should have figured it out 'cause Lament's pretty similar to what he was going by when I met him. Of course, I've changed mine too. Only I did it to ditch the whole criminal record instead of dodge paparazzi."

Okay, and that was a bombshell, despite the cheerful offhand tone. "You have a criminal record and you work in IRHQ security?" Bwah?

"Shhh!" Kilroy even held a finger to his lips. "They don't know that." Cheerful semi-smirk: some joke here that X wasn't getting.

"So who does?" Had there even been reploid criminals when Kilroy joined? 'Criminal record…' he'd been in music? Kilroy rarely outright lied, but perhaps it had been a mistake to encourage him so much. X appreciated the thought, of course. Kilroy was trying to distract him from Zero's predicament and the shock value of that statement and the puzzle it presented was doing a good job of it.

"A friend of yours." Literally true, but there was a trick to it. Come on, guess.

Well, there wasn't really much else to do until he got there. "Sigma?"

"No."

"Dr. Cain?" Those were family, not friends, but Kilroy was having X guess instead of dropping hints to draw out the interaction.

"Nope. Have you seen Spaceballs?" Okay, now that was a hint.

"My… uncle's cousin's something's something's… college roommate?" The end was right, but X wasn't sure about the rest. He realized sadly that he didn't even know if he had any uncles or aunts. Dr. Light's children had been the only ones to become legend.

"No, but it's rather complicated."

"Just tell me you're not with the Irregulars." There weren't many reploids with actual criminal records that weren't Irregulars. Perhaps Kilroy had been ahead of the curve? Rho had been the obvious choice for a friend of X's who would hide Kilroy's past, but it was too obvious. Not to mention that Kilroy had implied security in specific hadn't known that.

"They've decided to call themselves the Mavericks now," Kilroy cheerfully pointed out.

Even Sigma hadn't known that as of last night. "The Mavericks, then." And I'm not asking anymore.

"It is utterly impossible for me to ever become a Maverick." Kilroy overacted his dismissal of X's worried. "But," oh dear, that smile, "my builder was rather heavily involved early on."

"Your builder?" X knew Kilroy had a brother, but their builder had never come up. Odd, given how much Kilroy talked about everything under the sun.

"The reason I have a criminal record." Oh. "He's dead now. He may have dedicated his life to helping us be treated like actual people, but in the end he was only human."

"I'm sorry." Kilroy's last sentence demolished X's impression that Kilroy's builder had been the same as Zero's: a person who viewed reploids as worthless things and made them do terrible things. Early on… Early on, there had been some struggle for reploids to gain equal rights. Some activists had actually ended up in quite a bit of trouble for things that would have been considered admirable non-violent protest in a human, although the fact that Kilroy was… There had been some break-ins, files being released… X really couldn't see him as involved in the Silence protests.

"You know, it's quite possible that was exactly the way he wanted to go. And he had brain cancer anyway." Cancers of all sorts were quite common, due to the radiation and the chemical weapon residue and the biological weapons that kept being turned up… Dr. Cain had an unusual nerve disorder. Human lifespans were increasing now that reploids were helping, since they were unaffected by things that poisoned them, but Kilroy's acceptance of his father's death wasn't unusual. A human older than thirty was on borrowed time. Dr. Cain… he'd taken a lot of damage, combing through ruins to find something to help his fellows. "Char was more upset about it. Vowed vengeance, that whole thing."

So it had been murder, and by an irregular. So, someone who had helped Kilroy learn to project himself as harmless enough to fit into the hunters where he could keep helping reploidkind was researching irregulars in the company of someone who wanted an excuse to fight them? And… Oh, this was Kilroy. "So there's some secret agent gathering reploids with experience in shadowy stuff and a grudge against the Mavericks who's keeping an eye on me through you because I'm a key symbol in this struggle?"

"Ah, you guessed it!" Kilroy clapped again, although he seemed cheered by something else as well. "You make him sound so cold, though. He acts like it, but he's great with small children, animals, and mechanaloids."

"I'm sure. You know, I was informed by Sigma last night that he also thinks I'm the person who's going to bring an end to this conflict. Dr. Cain is counting on me." X wished he hadn't said that.

"Tough luck." Anyone else would have expressed their confidence that of course X could do it, but this was the other way Kilroy got all the gossip. He wasn't just bored, nosy, and all over the place: although he rarely shut up long enough for people to vent at him, he knew what was going on with you anyway and knew what to say.

Now, though, he was looking around the gardens, showily tuning X out though Kilroy never missed anything. He didn't let people rant at him often because if they weren't going to let him have some input they might as well complain to a wall that wasn't listening and wouldn't have its time wasted, but this was clearly an invitation to be X's wall. "I don't know if becoming a hunter was the right idea." He really, really wouldn't have said that to anyone else. They would have seized the opening, but Kilroy just nodded in that 'I'm not actually listening, but I'll pretend that I am' way, which normally would have meant he was bored but Kilroy made it excruciatingly obvious when he was bored.

"I thought I should be the one to fight because, let's face it, I was built by Dr. Light. We… They still can't even fully analyze my systems, let alone equal them. So, I've got a huge advantage over my opponents, and who should be out there, me, or someone with a tenth the shielding?"

"Um-hum." Polite not-listening noise, but here it meant he was and he understood.

X really needed that. "The thing is, I'm blue. So when people think of me fighting, who springs to mind? The greatest hero of all time. He saved the world how many times, and there's no proof, but everyone knows he died stopping the cataclysm from wiping out the rest of humanity. They expect me to be Megaman, they need me to be Megaman, and I'm not. I feel like I'm giving them false hope, and I'm afraid that if they trust in me they won't try to find their own ways to help, and then if I fail…"

"Lot of pressure." Still looking out to the side, apparently at a volleyball court without players, as his pace increased so X wouldn't have to look at his face and be reminded that this was a person, one of his children, he was saying this to when he really shouldn't.

"I don't want to fight. I want to be back in our lab trying to find ways to design better reploids so there won't have to be anymore Irregulars, or Mavericks, or whatever they call themselves." He wanted it so much.

"If not you, who else?" That was a quote of some kind: Kilroy wasn't saying that X, despite his failures, was the best one with hope of finding out something everyone, including him had missed for years. No, he had hit the nail exactly on the head.

"I should say the Hunters. I helped build Sigma, Rho, and Theta." Three of them, when there had been four. "They're the best out there." Now. "The problem with that is, I helped build them." My children, my _own_ children. "I know the weak points in the design, all the things we wanted to do but couldn't. They're far more experienced than me. But I can take more." All the knowledge, all the skill, all the drive, and yet: "You know the blast that killed Ceta? I would have survived that. I would have been hurt, but not enough I couldn't keep fighting. But it was her there," my baby, "not me. And it was overkill." Melted fragments, some so mingled with other wreckage that they couldn't identify what had once been over half of the body he had so carefully, but not carefully enough…

"You don't want to hurt people, especially not family, but you're the one with the best odds of surviving and it needs to be done?" Kilroy summarized, leaning against the wall of what seemed to be Zero's building and looking at X as he caught up.

"Yeah." It sounded so very different when Kilroy summed up than when his family had, all saying it wasn't his fault when he'd built her, wasn't his responsibility (his own child, his own children!)…

"If I didn't know better, I'd be mistaking you for Megaman too."

Thinking it wasn't a foolish decision was one thing, but that was really going too far, even though Kilroy was just sort of pursing his lips as if in thought, nodding, like the flower he'd told X the meanings of. This, though, was just, "What part of that is like Megaman?"

At first Kilroy's tone was chiding, "Like Megaman, nothing," and X thought he was finally going to have his words mocked like he deserved to have Kilroy mock them. Then there was a smile that grew from slight fondness to utter wickedness. "Like the person under the helmet, everything. Ninja vanish!"

X blinked at the spot Kilroy had been a moment ago. "That is an utterly unfair way to get the last word." That wasn't a teleport: no odd light effects from what still had physicists scratching their heads. Cloaking took a bit to engage, too and he'd been looking right at him. There and gone.

There was no response, and that was just as amazing. "Wow. You actually are capable of being silent." That was a little… insulting, X realized after saying it, to imply he was a brainless chatterbox when he was anything but, or that he'd been outright lying. Still, X was a bit in shock over being compared to Megaman for something he had done instead of just for his color and name and Kilroy was probably snickering over getting a reaction like that out of him, so an apology was certainly unneeded.

Not to mention that they were here and Kilroy had implied that Zero was… X knocked on Zero's door: yes, this was the number on the card. "Zero!"

No response. "Zero, I know you're in there! Get ready, because I have the door override and I will use it! Five, four, three, two…" There was now an eye in the peephole, according to X's advanced optics. "Hello, Zero." Good Zero. Yes, X had still got it.

"Go away." Not in the mood for your cheerfulness!

"What on earth are you feeling guilty about? If anything, that should have reduced your guilt level."

"Causing HQ to panic is supposed to make me feel _better_?" It wasn't just the concept that made no sense: it was the fact that _X_ was scolding him. Was this really X?

"The fact that you didn't kill anyone should have. Think, Zero." Yes, this is Dr. X, not the rookie who doesn't know what he's doing and was trying to cheer you up because helping someone was what he needed and he didn't feel any right to tell another how to deal with their guilt when he couldn't handle his own. "Sigma's even more convinced now that you saved his life. You know he thinks it was that thing on your helmet that made you kill those people, and it was only you fighting it that let him destroy it! Now, you were in a very similar situation, and what happens? You didn't kill any of the people who threatened you. Instead you found me and made sure Sigma and I were safe."

"So there's actual evidence now that it wasn't me." Zero's voice was far too dull.

"Yes."

A pause, as Zero sighed. "I would really like to believe that."

"So we run more tests until we have enough information to find out who built you and put that thing there so we can put _him_ on trial."

"I don't want to do that again. I don't remember, so they had me watch the tape. I was acting like a cat." That was not the issue at all: it was whining, and X refused to humor him.

"I'd say it was more like a lion." Yes, Zero, the exact species is more important than your objections.

"X, I could have chopped your head off with my damn hair!" Now, that was a roar: Zero was angry now, and at the real issue.

"Well, it's not like you're a tame lion." X half-smiled, though he didn't see Zero's eye anymore. "Tell me you haven't cut off your mane."

"Now, there's an idea." Zero leaned against the door with a thump, voice dull again now.

"Zero, don't. It's a very nice mane." Teasing kindness now, real affection for his child: in the dark but not alone. "I like non-lethal weaponry. I like that you used it." That's why I'm not worried.

"X, that's why…" Zero's head thumped against the door. "You have no sense of self-preservation." Now here was his teacher, lecturing his student. "You had the head of a killing machine running on instinct in your lap."

Though if Zero thought that ceasing to act like a child would make X start acting like one again, "You weren't running on instinct. The instinct of a killing machine is to kill, especially when people run in and point weapons at it. That's a pretty good indication they're trying to hurt you. Not to mention that you had been attacked by people just like them, in the same armor as them, last time. You had every reason to believe they were your enemies, and instead you thought they were idiots and demonstrated why what they were doing was stupid without hurting them. I was rather reminded of you-you, really."

Zero was silent, wanting to find a way to counter X's argument but not wanting to at the same time, if he even could. "You say it's an animal, that _you_ yourself are a soulless fiend," yes, overdramatic language was wonderful for pointing out when people were taking things too seriously, "and yet you did the right thing. They probably were about to do something stupid, and I was in the line of fire."

X could hear some of Zero's system noises through the door, and he heard the shock that sent through him. Zero had thought of himself as the danger to X. Yet he'd protected him, hadn't he. Like Sigma, even though Zero was probably about to think that it was his fault they were in trouble in the first place and then be even more foolish. "Zero, you listened to me. You snapped out of it when I said the right thing. I'll help you learn how to do this, like you're helping me learn." Listen to me, not to your guilt.

"I think I have to."

"Why is that so bad?" Wasn't it better to become complete than to lock that part of himself away again? It might be a good thing Dr. Cain hadn't been able to. The other Zero wasn't a mad aunt in the attic, or some such thing.

"If it can access what I know, like who you are and that hunters aren't enemies, then it's possible that something might go the other way. Since I woke up this time I've had this, this feeling."

"What feeling?" X let his hand rest on the door: surely Zero could tell it was there.

"Something's going to happen soon. Something's out there, and it… wants something that it would do anything to get without even thinking about it, and it knows it can't have it as long as you block it."

"Can't I just not block it, and then everyone's happy?"

"You can't. Not as long as you're you."

"Is what it wants so bad?"

"It doesn't think so. The, maybe lion is a good word. It just lies there mostly, but… the lion doesn't care about that, really. Just that you're in danger. It doesn't care about anything except that its people are safe and stay put."

"I'm in danger?"

"You in particular. I don't know how many others are too just from the collateral damage of it getting what it wants. No, there are specific others, but… it's not words. Just sort of feelings, and… there are other things it doesn't like. You, though… it feels like destiny. It feels like polar opposites. Order and chaos? Matter and anti-matter?"

"First Cain and Sigma, then the ninja, and now you are telling me that the fate of the world rests on my shoulders. Do you think this thing could be the Irregulars or whatever they're called now?" X leaned against the door, matching Zero's pose. Supporting him as though the door wasn't there.

"Since you're a hunter, and they're your enemies, if it isn't using them already it will be soon." Zero's voice was still so dull, though a hunter should care.

Okay then… "You know how it thinks?"

"I know you, and I know it's the opposite of you."

"I have an evil twin?"

"This is not something to joke about." Good, now he was angry instead of… was that how despair sounded in Zero? "The lion's not scared. I am. Anything capable of fear would be. I'm going to die, X!" Zero wasn't afraid of that, he was just irritated X was joking about it.

"What? No. You're not."

"It, I, know it, like you know one plus one is two! It's fact, X."

"Well, yes, it's called entropy."

A pause as Zero looked that up. "I'm not talking about the heat-death of the universe! Yes, everyone dies eventually, but I mean me specifically, before this is over!"

"Then we need to find out why it thinks that, so we know what to do to change things so that it isn't certain."

"Some things you can't fight, X. Or, maybe you can fight but you can't win, and if you don't accept the facts reality'll break you." Zero's strange tone said that he was right, and it was nice to be able to shut X down even if X didn't accept that he was shut down. Yet he didn't truly like what he was saying or that X couldn't argue with it.

X considered carefully. "Then I'll fight as long as I can for you. I'd fight longer, but you seem like you would be happier if I didn't.'

Zero's head slumped forward away from the wall… No, that wasn't despair that X was willing to give up on him. Yes, X's scanners were so very much cheating. Weapons systems radiating less waste heat, indicating a lower readiness level, if a fractional one, other systems doing their own equivalents of untensing… no horror, no betrayal. Relief. He'd guessed the right thing to say.

X's relief mirrored Zero's, and they stood there like that for a few long moments.


	5. Absolute Power:

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own Rockman: Dr. Light does. But Capcom owns Dr. Light's soul, so I suppose that's fair. I certainly don't own either of them: human slavery's illegal and Rock should be emancipated too. Then he can get a salary for the games Capcom puts him in. Though if they make him freeware they might not put him in any more things, and that would be sad, so never mind.

Yep, you're getting stuff right now. Not stuff that I consider high quality, but I'm writing it for stress relief and hence don't care. This is where things start getting weird. Well, weirder. For X, anyway. He was well aware that Zero was an irregular so that wasn't too odd, and Kilroy's really being Kilroy, from his perspective, just a new aspect, as he don't know from Shadowman.

* * *

Finally X broke the silence. "Come on, Zero: we're missing training."

Zero never, ever, missed training. "Okay, okay, just let me change." His armor had torn up the mattress and there was fluff all over it and everything else. He was not looking forward to cleaning it up. And with that, normalcy returned and all was right, or perhaps a little more right than usual, with his world.

"Hurry up, okay?" X sounded affectionately amused, happy that Zero was back to his old self now. The target of so much hate, Zero was used to a teasing tone meaning someone was about to amuse themselves at his expense: the sound made him tense a bit, but this was X. X only laughed with. "Kilroy's been quietly waiting for us to finish and I'm afraid the strain might break something."

_Kilroy was here_? "Don't tell me he heard all of that!" Zero fumed. "Goddamn security voyeuristic bastards!"

"Big Brother is watching you!"

Zero snarled something unprintable and slammed the off button on his door intercom: the anti-noise field would prevent him having to listen to any more of that…

Well, at least Zero was angry at someone else now. That was an improvement. X looked around, then up. "Oh, there you are Kilroy."

"I just _had_ to say it. It was too good to pass up."

X had to think about that. "Oh, I suppose that is appropriate." It was from a pre-Cataclysm book where everyone was being watched constantly by an organization named 'Big Brother.' The book had been on actual paper, and hence some copies had survived. Nothing on any computer hooked up to any sort of network had. "How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" Kilroy did a marvelously 'bad' job faking innocence.

"That thing you're dong that lets you stand on a tree trunk vertical to the ground. I don't see any wires, you're not using hidden electromagnets in the branches, there's no moving air…" X couldn't see Kilroy's readiness state with even Dr. Light's sensors, so he couldn't tell what he was using from that. If you wanted to do stealth, you had be able to control infrared and system noise as well as human-visible light. Kilroy _always _seemed perfectly at ease to anyone's attempts to read him, even when he was all geared up to throw paint at them. He could even alter his heat signature and system noise enough it seemed nothing like his for purposes of getting in close to someone without them realizing who it was until too late.

Now that he thought about it, what on earth was someone with Kilroy's stealth capabilities doing in security? A field hunter would cheerfully give their right arm to be able to sneak up on Irregulars like that and deploy a capture net without them being able to fight back and get anyone hurt. If he was guarding the hunters (and X), then of course he would want the job he had but why would they let him? Oh, chain of command. He'd joined Rho's group, and there was no way Rho would let Sigma poach his right hand and best friend anymore than Sigma had wanted to let Theta have that analyst for the legal department.

"Oh, this?" Kilroy waved at his feet dismissively. "It's a ninja thing."

"Okay." Oh! "You'd better not be using spikes, though. The gardeners go ballistic when people damage the trees."

"Nope, I'm not."

"I'm really wondering now." X told his scientific curiosity to please go back into the box. He was no longer the second-greatest scientist in the field of reploid systems. He was a hunter now: he was only interested in the practical now.

"Come to the dark side, we have cool tricks?" Kilroy said that offhand, not actually offering. "The original version was, 'Come to the dark side, we have cookies,' but we were lying. It's actually the Light side that has cookies. They're very good, too."

Zero's door slammed open. "Kilroy! What are you doing here?"

"Keeping an eye on X. Want to lend a hand?" Kilroy was utterly unphased.

"Then why would you want my help? Aren't you supposed to be protecting him from me?" Kilroy was failing to make sense, and that meant that something was going to make all too much sense soon. Zero really did not like that.

"Well, personally, I'm all in favor of my opponents deciding they'd rather work with me than against me. Professionally, three out of the big four are worried about the mavericks _so_ much more than you. You're yesterday's news." Kilroy paused. "And today's, and at least the next week's. We'll see how long it takes to die down. Glad I decided not to join Theta's department, although I'd love to be handling PR." He grinned fiendishly.

Dear lord no.

"Okay Kilroy, that's enough buildup, hurry up and drop the bombshell," Zero growled.

"Okay, then." Kilroy shrugged. "Congratulations! You were on candid camera. And now you're on tabloid covers."

Zero lunged at Kilroy, who let himself be tackled down from his odd position without giving X any clues as to how he had done it in the first place. "If you leaked the tape!"

Kilroy shook his head calmly. "Nope, not me, Rho. No one else knows, though, except I told X. Proving it would involve revealing how I know, and I like not being in jail."

This was rather… odd, wasn't it. Zero would never, in a million years, have done anything seemingly violent or even expressed anger, especially not to another hunter. Or that was what X had thought. He was always so paranoid about self-control, both because he worried about that control and because even raising his voice would trigger old memories in many people. He worried about losing control, they worried about him losing control, and many wanted an excuse to declare that he was about to lose it and kick him out of the hunters or worse.

Yet, Kilroy was Kilroy, he made everyone lose their cool, so that made it look to the hunters like Zero was, was normal? There was more to it. Kilroy had referred to Zero's irregularity as 'that' and though he'd made inappropriate jokes related to sexual practices reploids simply didn't have the parts for, he'd said that Zero, well, the lion version of Zero, turned him off when Zero was far from unattractive. He didn't like Zero's irregularity, but he seemed utterly fearless when it came to Zero himself.

Of course, if Kilroy's father had been killed by an irregular, than of course he would not like an irregular that had killed so many of his friends. Yet he was willing to arrange things so that Zero could use him as a target for the justified anger he couldn't show towards all the others that hurt him.

And X had thought he and Sigma were the only ones helping Zero deal with this. No wonder they'd wanted to give Kilroy an additional salary for doing this, back in the days when they'd set a budget for parties. Now, though, when they desperately needed to boost morale, they didn't have the resources to 'waste' on it.

Dr. Cain really didn't understand much but medical issues, Rho's department wasn't on the front lines and hence were doing mostly fine, Theta's department was insanely busy as the legal and public relations issues grew more and more complex (it wasn't just getting permission to capture and pressing charges anymore), and Sigma's department was the one being hit hardest but although he was in the middle he was in his element. Sigma thrived on finding ways to do the impossible. He didn't like this situation, but he'd never liked how irregulars were treated, he'd dedicated his life to fixing it, and so he was stressed out but knew he was doing the right thing.

Sigma was the strategist, the leader of the four, the visionary. He had originally been in overall command. Now he had ended up having to look after the field hunters in addition to telling them what to do. Ceta was the one who had managed the field hunters. Vava of Special Ops, who from what X gathered after looking him up was essentially a department head in his own right despite the old-school lack of a title, had gone down with her even though he lingered on. Sigma didn't have anyone looking after morale, he personally didn't have morale problems, and he had so much on his plate what with having two departments dumped into his lap and the situation changing so rapidly he hadn't had the time to fix what didn't seem broken.

X really should hurry up and finish training. He'd done this to take Ceta's place, and it looked like it needed to be filled even more urgently than he had thought.

When Zero pulled away from Kilroy and hung his head in hopeless defeat when he found out that the person who had done this to him was a department chair it just confirmed it. Without proof, with Zero's hated status, and with Sigma so busy, there was no way for him to get any sort of justice. "Bastard. He'll comfort me about it, too."

"Why would Rho do something like this?" X finally asked Kilroy.

Kilroy answered as he stood up and brushed off leaves. "He still hasn't gotten over Nobody and Razor Pinion."

"The Garm's commander? And who's Nobody?" No, the right thing to say was 'who was Nobody.'

"Yep. As for Nobody, he was a hacker. Worked with Garm all the time, but he was technically in Vava's bunch because otherwise he and Pinion would have been against regs. I met the guy because I ran the course on how to make proper use of stealth systems until I got too busy and Sting Chameleon took over."

Kilroy spent almost all day wandering around base and he was too busy while a unit commander wasn't? "A lot of people lost friends then, but that's no reason to do something like that to Zero." X couldn't get cross with Sigma, who was his commanding officer, but Rho was another story. He had to start taking responsibility.

"Who said friends? Unless you mean friends with benefits. Just with Nobody, though. He and Pinion got along like a house on fire, but Rho's not into avians and since his redesign's like Sigma's, he's too heavy for midair sex." Kilroy poked Zero with his foot to see if he got a response.

Zero's only response was a groan of frustration as he let himself collapse to the ground, utterly tired of this.

"Kilroy?" X could take insinuations about himself or reploids that weren't his personal children, but that made him blush. "Too much information."

Kilroy looked down and shook his head, clearly regretting Zero's sucky amount of HP when it came to psychological warfare. "No such thing. Knowledge is power, and you can never have too much power." He stepped over him, heading towards X.

"Power corrupts? Absolute power corrupts absolutely?"

"Dude, dark side, remember?" Kilroy leaned against the tree trunk in a normal manner, sadly not giving X another demonstration of that puzzling technique.

"Oh, right. Are you another Star Wars fan?"

"Of course. I'm the club skit director. We used to do these scene reenactments, and scenes we made up, and parodies of scenes, and all sorts of stuff, remember? It was a blast. Didn't you ever see one?"

"I kept having emergency surgery to do. I don't think there have been any since I joined the field hunters."

"We need a new Han, Leia, and Yoda. I could take some paint to 'Vile' and that would free up our Boba Fett, but that's not much help since he always flubs any lines now. Sigma's the only guy we have now good enough with a beam saber to do Yoda but he's too big and he's perfect for the bald badass Jedi Council member. I've had this one guy doing Anakin and Vader the whole time. He wanted to do it when we were starting up, but he said he couldn't act, and I was all, 'perfect!' Sadly, he had natural talent and though I did my best to stifle it he was forced to master the innocent look because he keeps playing video games on duty. I'd like to move him to Han, but Zero here refuses to play Anakin and Vader."

"Do you play anyone?"

"I have dibs on Darth Sidious." Kilroy gave him a look. "Are you volunteering? You could do Leia..." Which very few around here could: hunters were combat reploids, and since humans didn't like the idea of females or female models in combat, all the reploids purpose-built for the hunters were male. Not to mention that most reploids had their armor integrated with their main and life support systems, due to lack of space, while X only kept his defenses and weapons in his, and thus could remove it to pass for human without ill effects.

"…I'll think about it." He'd decided to help fill Ceta's role, yes, but in the hunters, not in a dress… Wait! This was a perfect opportunity to get Zero involved in social activities! "Zero, what do you think?"

No response from the prone figure. "Zero?" X walked towards him, intending to shake him a bit to wake him up if necessary. "Zero?" Zero had two OSs. They interacted oddly with each other and his body as it was. Zero had to be so fanatical about training because his OS's incompatibility with his atypical body meant his motor functions were extremely difficult to control with the level of precision necessary to capture an opponent alive. If he didn't wake up, this could very well be something very bad.

He had to go around Kilroy to get to him, and he realized that Kilroy's nonchalant position hadn't been blocking his view of Zero by accident when Kilroy reached out and snagged his arm. "Don't touch."

Looking past Kilroy, who still had his back to Zero, X's magnified vision saw that several thin strands of Zero's hair were defying gravity. They were almost invisible, and X realized that the blond color wasn't just for vanity's sake any more than the rest of that mane was. "He's not going to hurt me. Let me try to snap him out of it."

"Don't." The 'don't touch' had been slightly humorous, a mother's admonition to a child to keep their hands to themselves. That, though, was firm.

"Why not?"

Kilroy's tone changed again. "He's not going to 'snap out of it' right now. He's listening." Vague and distant? Kilroy? Kilroy wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying now. Kilroy _always _paid attention to what he was saying, chose his words carefully, but now it seemed as though he spoke without thinking, focused on something else. Something urgent, something that had come up in the second since X had spoken last.

"Listening to what? Did Dr. Cain find out more about his sensor strands after the meeting?"

Despite the eerie distance still being there Kilroy's next words were spoken jokingly, as usual, and yet… The tone that gradually crept into Kilroy's voice and tainted his enjoyment was one that X had never heard from him, or even from Rho at his worst. Normally, thought Kilroy might joke about the dark side everything he said and did was so very lighthearted, even the cruel words meant to help get things over with. Yet as each word passed his lips it became more and more possible to imagine him playing the role of Darth Sidious, the 'insidious' one who had toppled the Republic from within.

That tone gloated that X had done something foolish, made a mistake, given an opponent an advantage. "I didn't know Dr. Cain had realized already that he had 'sensor strands' at all, thank you for telli-" Yet the distance grew along with the darkness, and finally his voice stopped altogether and X had to quickly adjust his balance when Kilroy froze in place and his hand on X's arm and the tree he leaned on became the only things keeping him vertical.

"Kilroy!" Whirling around, X slid loose from Kilroy's fragile grip and held him firmly upright, shaking him. "Kilroy!"

"Don't bother calling him: he's not in at the moment." From behind him X heard another voice tinged with the same darkness that had crept into Kilroy's. Yet when Kilroy's darkness had risen the affection that was always there for his conversational opponents had dwindled to almost nothing, replaced with a veteran's cold seriousness. This new speaker's words contained equal amounts of dark mockery and affectionate amusement.

When X turned to look, leaning Kilroy against the tree more stably, he saw that Zero had risen as Kilroy fell. Someone had, at least. A regal figure regarded something that lay towards the northeast. X followed his eyes and saw a building, but that wasn't the target of that gaze, just something in the way. What this person looked at was hidden behind the curve of the earth to X, but not to him. "Zero?" This wasn't Zero, he knew that, but how did you address a strange person in your friend's body? The Lion was hard enough to deal with, and you couldn't really have a conversation with him.

"Don't you hear it?" Not-Zero answered, still focused on something X could not perceive even with all the sensors Dr. Light had given him.


	6. Corrupts Absolutely

Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman. But I should check my mail to see if the OVA DVD that I do own has finally arrived. I hope the rightful owners of Rockman, Capcom, don't hate me too much for this. I'd hate it if they didn't let me buy any more of their stuff.

Have you seen Chicago? "Give them the 'ol razzle-dazzle…" Shadowman's Kilroy persona works by distraction. Like a magic show:

"Watch very carefully as I make these magic gestures, I'm going to pull a rabbit out of my hat: can you spot the trick? Nothing up my sleeve… Are you watching closely now?"

Bang!

"Too bad: you should have been watching my _other _hand, the one that was drawing the gun."

…well, a James Bond-ish sort of magic show.

In the European courts, the Court Jester was a very serious position. He was the only one who could tell the truth without being executed, because, after all, those terrible things he said about the king were just jokes.

Okay, now where was I?

This, people, is where it starts to get seriously AU. Or, where we start to find out the extent of how very AU it has been all along.

* * *

"Hear what?" Something was going on, that was clear.

"The SOS. Aren't you going to answer it? He's your brother too, after all. Not to mention that you actually like them." The stranger lifted an eyebrow, gaze still focused on something X couldn't see, still mostly focused on something he couldn't hear."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." X shook his head.

"She's trying to break loose now that it's grown enough to wake her up and he's having trouble holding her back. Oh, right. Of course you can't hear him at the moment."

"Should I be helping?"

A unishoulder shrug dismissed his dilemma. "Who knows? We'd be better off if she were freed. You would probably disagree, but it's moot because I don't intend to do more than watch and you wouldn't be able to help unless I was, since you're an android."

X realized he should try to stick to simple questions. "Who is she?"

"She is the one whose long-mastered technique strikes down those once thought righteous quickly and without fail no matter what attempts to disrupt her mission. Slur for short."

Slur? He hit his dictionary. That was a musical term? But… yes, the meanings of that word could add up to all that. "I don't recognize the name."

"Not now you don't." A wave of his dismissed the topic.

Well… "Who are you/"

"I am… I was named Omega."

"No, you weren't. Omega's in Australia doing ecological reconstruction. I got a card from him on my birthday last month." X was trying to tell himself that was wrong as much as the other person. All that Zero had gone through was bad enough, but to think of it happening to his last child, the baby of the family?

"Not that Omega." What X found horrifying this 'Omega' found amusing. "I suppose there are only so many alphabets in common use… The name doesn't apply to me at all, but I haven't had time to consider who I have become and choose a translation for it into verbal human language." 'Verbal human language' was clearly considered a terrible way to communicate by this person, possibly because he was terrible at communicating.

X gave up. "Could we try you just telling me what's going on?"

"A_ lot_ is going on, and somebody took my best weapon while my body was off. I hope they're happy with it, because they won't be for long. Damn two-edged sword… Bah. More of a hassle than it was worth. I only actually need it to kill three people, and I don't have any reason to."

So it was a long story? "What do you think would be good for me to know?"

That gaze turned on X for the first time, and although most of his focus remained on something optics were useless for, the weight of that fraction of his regard made X, the eldest of his kind, feel like a child by comparison. The person studying him seemed far older and much wiser than a reploid could possibly be.

"While you're one of my children, I'll take care of you. Afterwards, you'll be fine unless you get yourself killed again like last time. Don't worry about my Zero aspect. He _is _going to die, one way or another, but we don't stay dead."

"Your children?" What?

The corner of his lip turned up. "Yes. My children. They could have been yours, but I was here first. You are 0001: I am 0000. You seem doomed to come in second place. I am _amazed_ Shadow hasn't recognized you. He's not the smartest of my full brothers, or the most perceptive, but he thinks well on his feet."

X blinked. "Uh… what would help me understand all that?"

Omega tilted his head, thoughtful. "Zero is a part of me, 'Lion' is another. I rarely become complete because it's terribly boring to be so out of sync with those around me, but Slur requires my full attention. In case you were worrying, she's not going to get free this time. As her name says, she tends to just charge ahead. Normally she has enough power to get away with that, but the route she's on is knee-deep in booby traps and when she gets to the wall she's not going to have enough strength left to break through all the reinforcing of that section he did. She's certainly not a fool, but she's arrogant. Our brother is not someone to get into a battle of wits with, and she seems to think she's so inherently superior she can win without any weapons." What an idiot.

That made him almost pull away, surprised and needing a moment to absorb that. "Our brother? So he's a half-brother to both of us? And Shadow is your full brother?" …family?

"The child of both our fathers, yes. Ah." He frowned, sad now. "It seems Sigma is the one my weapon walked off with. I left him for last because he should have been far more resistant than its other options, but that makes him the most useful. X? Stay away from him. You're one of the three people that weapon was made to destroy. Not kill: Destroy."

"Sigma wouldn't hurt me."

"_Sigma_ wouldn't." Frowning, he directed a portion of his attention inside.

"What's going to happen to him?" Not another one, not two of his children!

"When it is satisfied with its ability to emulate his personality, it will kill and replace him and I doubt even you could tell the difference until too late."

"How can I save him?"

"You aren't capable yet."

"Yet? What would I have to do?"

"Die." He chuckled after seeing X's expression. "We don't stay dead, remember? No, of course you don't, not right now."

"Is there anyone who can get it out of him without dying?"

"Right now? Myself, our brother, and Slur. Our brother is too busy, Slur would destroy Sigma without even slowing down in order to destroy the material the weapon is made of as quickly as possible, and as fond as I am of Sigma, as long as Slur is awake and might escape I cannot afford to have that in my possession unless I intend to use it to kill her, which I don't. I have responsibilities. I can't take it out of him, but I can take him out of its grasp, if you like."

Oh thank goodness. "Please."

He nodded. "Done."

Thank goodness. X couldn't bear the thought of losing his son to something trying to kill him. Wait a moment. "Is that what Zero was talking about? This weapons is my…?" He tried to find a word.

X was cut off with a, "Yes."

"Is it controlling the mavericks?"

"Mavericks?" This made him laugh. "What a ridiculous thing to call themselves. The word means someone who is bound by nothing but their own free will and what they believe is right. _You're_ a maverick. They certainly are not. They were, that's the entire point of our race. But they're not anymore, your guess is correct."

"So they are being controlled? And what exactly is this? Zero's explanation was pretty confused."

"No, I think he did a good job, given that he was having to deal with a human language. Let's rephrase it in terms of natural enemies. Or matter-antimatter was good. There's a lot that simply doesn't translate. Even Duo ended up calling it 'evil energy,' which isn't what it is at all but it's a half-decent description of what it appears to be for beings of limited perception."

X was trying to think if there was any way to get that clarified when the, the central Zero, smiled and clapped twice. "And she's back in containment. Brilliant moves. Of course, what we perceive as a chess match was a frantic split-second battle to the rest of them. I pity those who can only think at the rate human thoughts crawl, I truly do. If you weren't limited by keeping compatible with them I'd have people to talk to, for one thing. I don't think he can put her back to sleep when she's this excited, but our brother surprises many, often. Oh, Shadow will wake up eventually: once they finish the performance analysis he won't be needed until she makes another break."

"Why is Kilroy needed?"

"Kilroy?" He translated it. "Oh my, that's amusing. Someone's been hanging out with our brother for far too long. In that case, 'Lament' was borrowing his processing power. His and Slur's are about equal, but it's harder to be on defense than offense. And now he's probably using him to find out how the battle was for the rest of them."

"Borrowing processing power? Letting someone think with your brain? Is that possible?" It seemed just wrong.

"Non-sentient computers used to do it constantly. Ah, they had the sense to outlaw the internet and most other computer network types after what happened. Good. As for doing it with sentient beings, it gets quite tricky and I'm the only one on the planet who could do it to the extent he does, given compatibility issues. Speaking of networks, they finally noticed Kilroy wasn't checking in. Someone's made himself indispensable. That Rho was trying to get access to footage from this location and had no idea it wasn't the system's fault that none of his command sets and codes were considered precise or accurate enough." He clapped a bit. "I wonder if he has a cover story? They might insist on a medical exam anyway. I really wonder how he's been hiding the fact he's not a reploid."

"He's not?"

X was given a look. "No." Of course not. "Well, I suppose he could put some random nanites in his processor and have them look busy, but a good look would make it obvious they're not affecting his mental activity at all. Of course, Cain's the best you've got, so never mind then."

"Dr. Cain's a brilliant scientist!"

"No, he's a reverse engineer. Our creators were scientists. And engineers as well, of course. They went from what to why to how to another what, then repeated the process and ended up with us. Cain went from what straight to another what. He has a working idea of how but no real clue about why. As they say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. He does the best he can under the circumstances, but he's_ not_ a scientist. Well, Slur's not going to sleep, so I am." He yawned. "I'm going to leave Lion in control while the setting changes I've made take effect. He uses little enough system capacity that he can function, while my startup knocked Zero out. I suggest you tell them when they arrive, although no one's been sent out yet, that Kilroy collapsed mid-word and that Zero became Lion and not mention the rest of it: that would make it much easier on them, and this is a family matter after all." Family. "Good day." A regal nod, and Lion was left.

Lion poked Kilroy with his foot in an echo of what Kilroy had done earlier, gave him an unimpressed look when he failed to wake up, and padded back to X, looking expectant. "Do you want to be pet, Lion?"

Lion seemed to be pleased that X was a quick learner. He knelt down, and after the first couple pets X finally remembered his com. Which didn't work for some reason. If they were going to send people out, then he should probably wait for them here where everything had happened. Not to mention it was a bit of a walk, and he didn't think Lion would be willing to help carry Kilroy. Or Shadow, whoever he was.

A few minutes later he heard the augmented dash jets of a quick response team. "X! Kilroy? Kilroy! What's going on?" the leader called out. Luckily, security seemed to have learned not to point their weapons anywhere near X.

"Kilroy collapsed in the middle of a word, Zero went like this and won't turn back, and my com's not working. I thought I'd better wait here."

The security team leader bit back a curse. "Call extension 133 and enter 711 and it'll start working again. Hold on a sec while I do mine." Done, and he entered another number. "This is Waldo. Hack confirmed: Kilroy's down."

"Acknowledged. Stand by until Pepper sends the data."

"Hack?" X asked. So he did have a cover story.

Waldo hesitated. It was classified, but this was X. "Kilroy's got an interface system. They're illegal because it's normally incredibly dangerous for computers to network, let alone have a person hooked into something like that, but there are some allowed for monitoring extremely important systems, like our camera network and other security stuff here, because they're more secure already so the risk of getting blindsided is less and if they get hacked the person running it is in trouble _anyway_. The modern ones have a safety feature where if there's a hack, the reploid can't block it and it tries to hack into him, then the interface either self-destructs, which is really expensive but lets him keep working on manual or shuts him down. Just disconnecting isn't an option because if there is a disconnect option that's usually the first thing a hacker does. We've got a low enough threat level that we went with the knockout option. Or we had a low enough threat level when Kilroy got it installed, at least." He was hitting buttons on his com the entire time, but they seemed to be preset command codes since no call was made.

"So Kilroy can look through any camera from anywhere? No wonder he's so omniscent."

"No, most of that is because he's a know it all." The rest of the team had spread out. "Preliminary status report, Pepper?"

"No damage, but he's still running systems checks and he won't wake up until he's outside the range of HQNet and one of the wake-up conditions apply. That's SOP for these systems, otherwise he'd login automatically without being able to find out if it's safe or not first."

Not good. Waldo hit the recall option on his com. "Contact Dr. Lament and tell him he's got an incoming. Does he have anyone with enough clearance free? I want them out here ASAP, Rho. I've sent out the 'this is not a drill' stuff for general sweeps, but I'd like to know what the cancer is."

"You're telling me. We've left messages." Rho sounded highly irritated. "He's in the lab again and the house number's not picking up, but someone over at the UN kept calling until this intern answered the damn work phone. The teleporter's open, so we can send him up. The UN guy was talking about offering her a medal for acts of bravery, because Lament'll crucify her for ignoring the policy when he finds out, but I'm going to have to settle for a job offer. If this Alia's still got those balls when she's finished getting her doctorate, we need her."

X realized that this was another connection between all these dots that kept appearing. He really wondered what the picture would turn out to be.

Not to mention that he was concealing information on the advice of a split personality about it and something built by someone with Maverick sympathies. He really needed help figuring this out, and he should go to Dr. Cain and Sigma. They were his family, they had been his family from when he woke up and when Sigma woke up. They'd proved themselves trustworthy while Shadow and Omega, whatever they were calling themselves were dangerous and habitually deceptive.

X knew he had a tendency to give people far too much benefit of the doubt, and it had caused trouble several times. They needed to get to the bottom of this, and the reason he wasn't getting help doing that was Zero, essentially. Oh, that reminded him. "Can you have Kilroy come find me when he's awake so Lion can see he's okay?"

Waldo had ended the call already, and having gotten briefed on the bodyguard theory and so on, was all for that. "Time's going to be of the essence, but he can access from anywhere in HQ except the sealed rooms, so that should be okay. Think he'll," he indicated Lion, "let us carry him over to the teleporters? Lament's lab only accepts unit to unit. Security. That girl's going to get it for allowing incomings without permission. He's going to bust her clearance at the minimum."

"I think that if there's a security risk I should go to my rooms. Kilroy told me I was a possible kidnap target." Waldo had the grace to look slightly guilty. "Lion should come with me. He recognizes hunters as friends, though I don't know what else of Zero's memories he can access, so he should be fine with you carrying Kilroy." X looked at Lion for confirmation and Lion stood up, dared anyone to do anything stupid, and moved towards the main building, clearly signaling he wanted X to follow closely. "He doesn't talk, but he understands perfectly well, I think."

"I'll take your word for it." Waldo clearly wanted to get moving. "Pepper, Gavel, pick him up. Carefully," he warned Gavel.

Lion was taking front, clearly expecting the security to provide rearguard. X could get a good look at his hair from behind, and was reminded a bit of whiskers. When Zero-Zero was in control it was just hair-like, inert, but now there were slight motions and some loose strands, and though they attempted to camouflage themselves, pretend they were simply being tossed around as he walked they were clearly doing the same thing as Lion's turning head, optics sweeping the area.

Behind him, Waldo was talking with Kilroy's second in command, from what X overheard. Twig was trying to get the cameras all on manual and verify the input, and it was all going well except the area they had been. They agreed that the hacker must have wanted to hide that Kilroy had gone down, and that was why even Rho's command codes hadn't been able to regain access.

But Omega had said the 'hacker' was Shadow. X returned his attention to the hair, so he could give Dr. Cain his observations. The sensors were wonderful. The nanites, too: X had short hair but anyone with a helmet had problems. The problem was the weaponry.

Zero, they wanted to be able to control it. Lion was odd, but seemed to be on their side (now, at least) and probably wasn't intelligent enough to be fooling them about that. Omega, however, was an unknown quantity. Zero having a hidden personality that was intelligent and had access to weaponry like that was going to ring all sorts of alarm bells, especially since X hadn't really gotten that much information but it looked like the theory that Lion had been controlled might be blown out of the water, unless it was that 'evil energy' that had done it.

Omega had said that he had come before X. Something like that would make everyone, like X, want information _now_. For a lot of others, what happened to Zero in the process might not be that much of an issue. When you added in that Omega had admitted he had once had a weapon that was made to kill X (and two others, but most people wouldn't consider them that important by comparison) then, well, they were going to be worried about him. Pi, for one, would be quite willing to take Zero _apart_ if that was the only way to get answers.

So X had better find out what those answers were when it came to that. Well, he was used to solving puzzles, although mostly they were engineering puzzles.

Hmm.

There wasn't a lot of 20XX history out there. Almost all records had been on computer, and if computers back then were networked that would explain why none had survived. On top of that the cities had ended up craters and…

Most of what there was came from the memories of the survivors, and they had mostly been too busy remaining survivors, what with the radiation and the biological weapons and the chemical spills and the fact that every remaining robot had been hacked and without any surviving robot masters they couldn't unhack them until the EMS got set up, and that took ages because they'd lost all the space installations along with everything else… In any case, very few people had the time to write memoirs.

The information that survived was mostly the things people really wanted to remember, the stories they told their children about how the world had once been and how they hoped it would be again.

And that was, well, stories. A lot of people had been eager to tell X the stories passed down to them, but still…

Okay, so… who would Dr. Light have collaborated with? Some of the stories said that he'd once been friends with Dr. Wily at some point, but long before Megaman was built. Even if Wily stole the plans or something why would the villain who reprogrammed helpless robots have wanted to build a free-willed reploid? Not to mention that Shadow had said that his creator had been trying to get irregulars… robot rights activist?

Dr. Cossack!

That was one of the more popular stories because it had something people considered possibly romantic and that was always nice. There wasn't much else in the stories at all like that. Dr. Cossack's daughter had been kidnapped and he was forced by Wily to pretend he wanted to take over the world. He was defeated by Megaman and had been about to blow himself up to take Megaman with him so that Wily wouldn't kill his daughter when Megaman's older brother, the mysterious Protoman, arrived with her at the last minute after having rescued her from Skull Fortress.

Protoman was utterly confusing: there were so many versions and the ones that stuck closest to the facts on most verifiable topics said that no one had much clue about him at the time, either. He'd most likely been destroyed in a lab accident and then kidnapped by Wily along with Dr. Light's other creations except for the twins, then been rebuilt in time for the third war, gotten free of Wily, and either been recaptured and reprogrammed (again) or had a fake copy built to serve as the fake villain of the fifth war since he was all independent and stuff. Angsty loner type, apparently. Maybe bringing him back to life might count? But Omega had said their brother was "the child of" both their builders, and surely Wily hadn't considered his robot slaves his children!

Okay, so after the war Light and Cossack would have had a common enemy, and the stories did say that Cossack had helped out at least a little, only with so many versions it was hard to tell. What they did know was that Cossack had indeed considered his robots his children and had been very grateful for Protoman's rescue of his daughter and had campaigned for robot rights. There had been a book. There were no surviving copies.

So… did the rest fit? They might have collaborated on this 'Dr. Lament,' who might be a robot master (actually, he would have to be, if Omega was the first android), and then both worked on androids, Cossack finishing first? Or, actually, Dr. Cossack might have been more concerned with the free will issue than Dr. Light, whose child had chosen to be Megaman, after all, and started first. Maybe Dr. Cossack had woken up Omega for a bit so he could meet his family instead of just putting him straight into the capsule. X was a little jealous if that was true.

Okay, so where would Kilroy fit in? The criminal record could be explained by him having been one of the robots that Cossack had used in his fake war. Having been around before Omega would explain why Kilroy had been unable to resist the, "_Big Brother_ is watching you!" joke.

Kilroy had said his creator had been involved with the mavericks very early on, or something along those lines, and early on had been, in this day and age, trying to keep the poor babies from being executed after you fixed them, if they weren't blown up on sight. The robots that helped Cossack could have been considered dangerous, and according to the stories robot masters were considered much closer to things than reploids ever had been. When they'd found X they'd remembered Megaman's legacy, and then reploids had essentially saved mankind by helping with the Cataclysm cleanup. The EMS could only do so much, after all, and even with it keeping cleaned areas that way had been a constant battle as long as there were contaminated areas nearby that a rogue wind could spread poisons from. Not to mention the ecosystem…

Back then, robot masters had been reprogrammed a lot. Maybe Dr. Cossack had been killed by one he was trying to help? That Char had wanted revenge might mean that it was an assassin planted by Wily, even.

Oh, Char! He was Kilroy's brother, and he was dating the sister of a scientist who, X would bet, was Dr. Lament. That would mean that she was either another of Cossacks creations (nothing wrong with that, it wasn't as if they even had genes. When you considered that every reploid in the world 'descended from' X…), or she was Lament's sister and not Char's.

That would mean that she had been built by Dr. Light.

And that was when it really hit him.

A half-brother was one thing, a very odd thing, and it hadn't really clicked. A sister, a big sister, was another. Megaman did have a sister. She was the only female robot mentioned anywhere. There wasn't much information about her other than that she'd been a homemaker type and helped her brother by working on things with Dr. Light, and that would fit.

X had family out there, and he was only finding out about them now.


	7. So Study Hard, Be Evil

Disclaimer: Don't own, Capcom does. Don't sue, please.

…Waldo's a Kilroy disciple. He met him through the stealth class and he'd been stuck with a really terrible name by his builder, so since he was impressed by hearing people say, "Kilroy was here?" in that oh shit tone of voice, being all stealthy and hearing people go, "….where's Waldo?" sounded really fun.

As for why I had Shadowman's cover persona be a stealth-user mostly when his manga trademark is the appearing out of shadows thing, if X has a hard time with the tree thing, imagine the WTFage of something that shouldn't be possible without teleportation being involved and it's not. It would have attracted way too much attention if he let them see it.

* * *

X had spent more than three times longer than planned in that capsule until Dr. Cain had found him. Since then, he had been awake for years and his family had never let him know they were alive? If it weren't for Omega's information X wouldn't have figured out the meaning of Kilroy's words. That was so very like Kilroy, wasn't it. So many of his jokes were secret messages, things that didn't have any meaning unless you knew the code.

The 'big brother' crack at Zero had made no sense unless you knew the book. It made an entirely different level of sense when you knew that they were brothers.

Kilroy was watching over Zero. Maybe it was Zero he was here for, not X. Maybe Zero was the reason Kilroy had joined the hunters and, now that X thought about it, effectively controlled base security. After all, Kilroy had joined before X had even come on base. Hmm. The timeline…

Kilroy didn't know, or hopefully didn't, know that X knew. Unless he had a recorder in his body independent of the main power supply to make sure no one did anything while he was unconscious and could play the tape to listen to X and Omega's conversation. At first, X was thinking in terms of spray paint and the other things people dreamed of doing to Kilroy, then he realized that a security officer had to worry about actual enemies.

So of course Kilroy, who had taken it upon himself to teach X about 'the dark side' had a recorder. Which meant that he'd know and then Lament would, since everything pointed to Lament being Kilroy's boss to whatever extent.

The reason X had never questioned Kilroy's omniscience, or why he was, seemingly, never at his actual workstation yet still had his job was that he was the head of survaillence, under Rho, head of security. Which meant that Lament could know quite a lot about the hunters.

Not just that. Since Rho was Kilroy's friend, Waldo, the head of the security guards, was Kilroy's… maybe fanboy was the right word, and he remembered Kilroy saying that he had taken the tedious background checks off Rho's plate because they provided fun gossip/blackmail material, Kilroy was effectively in control of base security.

Kilroy didn't have an actual title or make an issue of the fact that he could give orders to just about anyone other than department heads or other department co-lieutenants because he was one of the title-hating old guard. The hunters had to adopt titles within units, and Sigma had ended up a general, but the parts of the organization that didn't have to make sure it was crystal clear who was supposed to listen to who and tell who else what in combat weren't standing for it.

And that was where timing came in.

Kilroy was one of the old guard. X had first met him when he and Dr. Cain had decided to transfer their lab to Hunter HQ so it would be easier to get Irregulars to them for treatment quickly. Between the initial defect, pre-existing injuries and injuries sustained during capture, a couple had died in transit or arrived too late to be saved.

They'd been scrambling to set up the lab while treating incoming patients, X remembered. He'd been playing gofer and coordinator because Dr. Cain didn't have the energy and he was the only other one who knew exactly what they were going to need for that sort of thing. There wasn't much time to meet and greet, so he hadn't known the person his database had first labled "Rho's tech No. 2" was called Kilroy until he came by to pick up the tamperproof disc of an operational recording that was going to be used as evidence in the trial for criminal endangerment of the owners of the factory that had built that poor irregular. X had learned it then because he had to verify the ID so the transfer chain couldn't be considered compromised.

At the beginning… they had to have everything perfect to win cases, depending on the judge. That was why Theta's legal/PR department was so important, probably more so than security. They got more budget, even. A lot more.

He'd come in a few more times to do upgrades and repairs during that period, but they were both busy while Kilroy was there, so the chatter had mostly been background noise. X hadn't found out Kilroy wasn't a normal tech until he'd mentioned him to Rho when he, Dr. Cain, Sigma, Theta, and Ceta had a non-working lunch later as part of the celebration of finally getting the lab finished. Rho had said that Kilroy had joined about half a year before then, which was, according to X's internal calendar (how human memories worked amazed him. He'd be lost without the search function, especially since Kilroy was so easy to tune out)… Around the time the first reploid had died because of transit time.

As that was long before Zero had been found, that meant that Kilroy had been sent here to keep an eye, and a large amount of cameras, on X by someone with a very good idea of how X thought.

It would have been stalkerish if it wasn't for the idea that it might be family. It was nice that they hadn't forgotten or just not cared. He hadn't been abandoned. In fact, between Kilroy and now Omega's and Zero's promises of protection he seemed to be surrounded by guardian angels.

If they cared and hadn't let him know they were out there then there had to be a reason, a good one. X was going to find out what it was and cause it to become invalid. He believed the usual phrase here was "with a vengeance."

When they got to the main building X found out why Waldo hadn't been trying to get Lion to walk faster, or one reason anyway. The halls had been cleared, possibly to avoid setting off Lion. X didn't think that was an issue, especially after Lion let Kilroy's bearers head towards the teleport rooms without any protest or reaction besides awareness of the fact they were leaving the convoy. He just headed for X's quarters.

They found Dr. Cain, or he managed to intercept them, en route. "X, are you all right?" X's step-father inquired worriedly from his life-support hoverchair.

"I'm fine. Zero, well, we decided to call this personality Lion." Turning his head to look at him, X frowned thoughtfully. "Hmm?"

"What is it, X?" The carefully-keeping-a-safe-distance-away security wanted to know too.

"I've been watching how his hair moved while we were walking here. I'm pretty sure he was using the sensors to scan for possible threats. Anyway, the way he's shifting them has changed. Before, the movements were trying to camouflage themselves as the result of his walking and turning his head. Now there's much more of a 'being tossed by the wind' effect, and we've only got the ventilation system in here. The constant slight air movement would not cause that sort of chaos. I think he's trying to orient his sensors to get more data, but it doesn't look like a threat response." Lion, either not knowing or not caring that he was being discussed, had passed by Dr. Cain with only an identifying glance and was clearly waiting for X to catch up.

"You're right. That can't be natural. My scalp is hurting just thinking of the matted tangles that would cause."

"We really, really have to figure out how to duplicate those hair care nanites." At that, the interest level of the guards and gawkers rose significantly.

"No reploid would ever have a bad hair day ever again," Dr. Cain agreed. "Still, this isn't telling us _why_ he's doing it. Unless it's just to look pretty."

Seeing the way Lion_ looked _at Dr. Cain after he said that, X had to smile. "I think he's aware he doesn't need to do that to look good."

"Yes, if I were cured," Dr. Cain, sadly, was only in his thirties. The residual damage from the Cataclysm was not kind to those who went outside the carefully cleaned areas, "he were the human female he strongly resembles, and he wasn't a fraction of my age," quite literally, "I would ask 'her' out." He'd have no chance, Lion's expression clearly communicated. "He does understand!"

"I'm not certain he understands everything: He could be going from tone of voice and key words, but I've never seen him confused. He's not a talker, though." While X said that Lion ignored him, his head turning to the side and tilting slightly down, watching in that way Omega had watched a battle beyond the sight of normal optics. "Why is looking that way?" X mused aloud.

"Given the extent to which his builder went overboard on the hair, X-ray vision would be almost too pedestrian. What's in that direction?" Dr. Cain asked one of the trailing security guards. (X's memory banks had this one labeled as Cain's Gofer No. 4: trained in emergency med tech repairs and coffee making. He needed to learn the new ones' names: they kept getting promoted since Dr. Cain got the best.)

"They're calling up the building schematic now." He paused, head frill swaying. "Teleporter room. He did it about the time we got an inbound. Kilroy's sub."

"Can we get him up here so Lion and I can hear how Kilroy's doing?" That wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either and that made X uncomfortable, even after the rest of the day.

"He's en route since you suggested bringing Kilroy up to Waldo, but Kilroy's probably going to be out for awhile. Mad Doctor Lament's been hounding him about coming in for a check-up for ages but Kilroy's been too busy. Since he just got knocked out, I'm betting he'll wake upgraded to a hearty welcome of 'I told you so.'"

X didn't think that was a cover story. Still, it was a little convenient.

He hoped this would all get resolved and he could stop being paranoid soon. How on earth could Kilroy consider this sort of thing fun? "Is there someplace we should meet? I was heading to my quarters to wait."

It was decided that this was a good idea and the caravan continued onward, Dr. Cain and his guards taking the place of unconscious Kilroy.

X's door had been fixed yesterday (busting it down… what were they thinking?) and Lion caught X's eyes and then swung his gaze towards the couch in a clear signal.

X did as directed, sitting down and quickly joined by Lion, head in X's lap. Seeing the curious looks, he shrugged. "He doesn't talk but he's very good at getting a point across when he wants to. Oh, Dr. Cain. He's neutral about touches to his shoulder and such. It's the hair he wants contact with. Moving contact is preferred, preferably in a pattern, but just glove contact there is acceptable. Full-armored contact or no contact isn't. Looking at it now," X noted, "I think he's shifting the strands so certain ones get in contact with the glove." Was it petting per se if Lion didn't care about the actual armored head?

"Keeping you away from the weaponry and having you touch the more sensitive strands with something radiating heat?" Reploid armor, especially X's, was a very good insulator because it had to be. It had gotten to the point where certain ceramic types were referred to as alloys, which were conventionally metallic, or mostly so, because they were used in armor and armor was made of alloy, so therefore they were alloys. Incorrect terminology, yes, but most people didn't care. It was the same sort of thing as X not technically being a reploid. The term Dr. Light had used for 'hard drive/nanite hybrid humanlike intelligence' was android. Reploid meant an attempt to replicate X, and, well, they weren't very close to him.

But they were still his children, so he called himself a reploid and wanted others to because he didn't want to be thought of as an entirely different species, for goodness' sake, or as though he was to ordinary reploids what robot masters had been to ordinary robots. They were just as intelligent and just as important as he was. More so, in fact, in several cases.

Although, really, he was an entirely different species from his father and stepfather, not to mention his robot master older siblings. So that really wasn't something that mattered, but still.

"He_ could _just be keeping you away from the weaponry and having you touch the more sensitive strands, but there's probably more to it than that," Dr. Cain agreed. "Although, it doesn't look like it's triggering the pleasure system, and given the theory that he was controlled by basic stimuli, like pain during the rampage, that's a little odd."

"It's more soothing." That theory could quite likely be considered disproven, and X should tell him that. Except, if Lion might have been doing that of his own free will, then he might have _chosen _to kill all those people. And then Zero might be executed, the way so many still wanted.

"I'm really wondering if he was built as a bodyguard." Dr. Cain looked thoughtful. "That would explain a lot, and I'm being reminded of those pre-Cataclysm movies where the villain was petting a cat."

X chuckled. "Not just that. Signal to stay calm and health verification?" Technical details, oh how he'd missed them! As a hunter, he should be thinking about strategy and so on, and worrying, but this was a puzzle and he liked those and he wanted a break until the replacement got here. "You can't build much of a sensor web into armor without defeating the purpose. So have strands in his hair that read… hmm. What would you need touch for? With a human, the heartbeat's audible, temperature's visable with infrared, and it's almost certain he has 360 degree sensor coverage including visual. He's looking smug, so I'm pretty sure that's confirmation."

"Mood," Cain said thoughtfully. "Blood pressure would be hard to do without some form of contact. Not to mention chemical analysis, amount of sweat, various twitches… With contact, he could know instantly if they felt threatened, if they trusted the others present… humans signal emotions in all sorts of ways. If that's the case, he'd make quite a good lie detector."

Lion did smug amazingly well. "I wonder if he was built by someone who liked cats," Dr. Cain mused, and then clearly thought a bit further and decided to not go there. Cats were associated with lonely old humans, Lion was undeniably attractive, had no contact taboo, hadn't been sentient… Or that had been the theory.

Thank goodness X knew sexual abuse wasn't a possibility in this case. It had happened. There were laws now. Still, as a parent he didn't want to think about it anymore than his own stepfather did. "With reploids," or androids? "the equivalent would be systems readiness, amount of repair nanites deployed," repairs ate up power like crazy, so they didn't make extra nanites unless they thought they would need them, "the amount of processing power they're using, and so on, but unlike humans we can control those things consciously, so while they'd work for someone acting natural that sort of thing would be useless for lie detection."

X looked down at Lion to see his reaction to this and smiled slightly. "I seem to be missing something. Any hints?" Lion's only response was a larger smile. "Okay then. I don't think we can get him to volunteer information. He seems to like being the center of attention and showing off by surprising us."

* * *

Yeah, this chapter's mostly transition, putting pieces in place. Next time, on Who You Choose To Be: pieces fall into place.

And another game of "Who's that robot master?"


	8. Sufficiently Advanced

…I decided to be nice and not end the previous chapter just when things were getting interesting. That made it a boring chapter. Nice author makes for boring stories: readers please take note of this.

Ah, yes: Disclaimer: I don't own anything Capcom does, which includes Rockman and much, much more. Please don't sue me.

* * *

"X!" Rho's voice came through the door instead of the intercom: he never used it, a habit X had given up on breaking him out of a long, long time ago.

X, however, still used it, not wanting the entire hall to hear the conversation. "You can come in, but be careful. Zero's still Lion." As Rho entered, X asked, not expecting a yes, "Lion, are you going to hurt Rho?"

Lion very clearly did not give a damn about Rho.

"Hmm, you seem to be safe. Until Zero wakes up, anyway." The fact that X was joking about Rho being hurt, despite the fact he was only doing it because there was no chance he would be, was a sign that Zero was not the one Rho had to worry about. This was a sign that X was, at the first opportunity, going to read Rho the riot act.

The fact that X was making a clear effort to be friendly, non-serious, and assure Rho that he was going to be fine when normally those were things X did automatically was a sign that if he were less of an insanely nice person he wouldn't be trying to make sure Rho knew X still loved him despite how angry he was at him: he'd be yelling at him until Rho had an ego the size of a mouse and was groveling and begging to try to win back X's respect and placate him.

"Okay." Rho's eyes widened, the oh shit reaction restrained for the same reason the desire to find a deep hole to hide in had to be. "I'd better stay here. I need more information from Cuff."

"Cuff? Is that the person Lament sent?"

"Yes." A mostly red reploid-or was he?- with gold trim came in behind Rho. Zero's colors were red and gold. Despite the fact that Dr. Light had lived in Japan, where red was the color of protection, among other things, used in charms against evil, he had been of European descent where red was an inherently dangerous color. On the other hand, Dr. Cossack was Russian, and X couldn't think of what red meant there off the top of his head but given that it was closer to China… Russians used gold leaf for icons and other things… There had been Lightbots besides the twins, but he had to hide a bit of disappointment when he realized the odds this was one of them were probably on the low side. "They included the bit about him," the rep… the robo… Cuff continued, indicating Zero. When the door closed behind him, he added, "Kilroy gave me something to say that will hopefully be Kilroyish enough that he'll know he's woken up. Want it now?"

"How long is it?" X asked, apropos of nothing, mostly just to draw out the conversation, hoping for clues. Although if Kilroy was up and knew what was going on, there might be clues but they wouldn't just be dropped: they wouldn't have sent someone likely to slip up. Not Kilroy and the person who Kilroy regarded as his master when it came to 'snark-fu,' or verbal combat.

"Lament was giving him a _look_, so only two sentences." Yes, this person knew Kilroy well. His brother? Someone who had known him for a century? Or just an ordinary someone who he knew via Dr. Lament?

"Lament's there and Kilroy's already awake?" Rho seemed astonished. "The last time he called he said that if he got his hands on Kilroy I wouldn't be getting him back for a week with all the accumulated necessary upgrades and repairs, like installing a working logic processor."

"He does need to be upgraded, but we've had a situation." Cuff had turned to Rho, ignoring X for the moment. He felt a bit hurt, but there was something important going on despite X having found something out unexpectedly. "That's why I couldn't tell you anything until I completed system checks and we were someplace I could verify as secure. And why I'm here instead of Spin even though she's the designated sub for this sort of thing. You weren't hacked. The EMS surge protector got its first test run."

No one jumped out of their seat in shocked panic at that news. That was because Rho wasn't in a seat, X was weighted down by Lion, Lion didn't give a damn about much (if he even knew what the EMS was) and Dr. Cain was firmly fastened into his seat. The various wordless exclamations made up for it.

To calm them down before they had a metaphorical heart attack, Cuff held up his hands placatingly. "It was successful."

"I know that by the lack of 'this is not a drill' sirens," Rho said dryly. "What the hell happened?"

"The surge was contained. The power source hasn't returned to a stable state, though, so Dr. Lament, Spin and Kilroy are over there with Couer working on it.

"What's the prognosis?" Dr. Cain was clearly burying his worry behind the need to stay calm. Understanding the problem meant a solution could be found, and one had to be found: they all knew that but Dr. Cain had lived it and was dying of it.

Cuff shook his head, wanting to reassure them or at least give them information but not knowing what to tell them. "Lament did a report, you know how fast he works, but Spin's been too busy to translate it out of Lament-ese. We sent it to the physics guys at UGV, but apparently the powers that be grabbed almost all the statisticians with enough clearance to be in the same room with it for the HPGR review."

The human population growth rate was, with the species having been so nearly wiped out and still in danger from residual damage, highly classified. When it had been publically announced slight changes in it had huge effects on the entire world's behavior: to avoid that sort of chaos they now kept analysis of it under strict lockdown to avoid leaks. The data was gathered yearly, analyzed in a secure complex, and no one there left until the project was completed and they could all be searched at once. People going in and out meant data could, and had been, smuggled. After that had caused a riot once… the people with the training to convert data that esoteric into a usable form and check if it fit the physicist's hypotheses might as well have been on the moon. "One person filed for clearance after HPGR started so they wouldn't get grabbed for it, so they rushed the check on them."

"Thank god. I don't know what they're thinking, grabbing everyone in the field without any advance notice for so long every year. More people means less time, yes, but," Dr. Cain shook his head: no time for a rant on that, even though he'd had several experiments highly disrupted by that. Every scientist needed basic training, of course, you might as well throw darts to get your test results as run an experiment without knowing the basics, but when you were doing things as important and expensive (in money and lives) as Dr. Cain did, you could _not_ afford to have your experimental results be completely worthless because something not basic applied and you hadn't had someone look it over to check for design flaws.

Dr. Cain was highly trained and well aware of the issue, so he checked and it had always been enough, but a company running failure rate tests on a component material and using an analysis shortcut without checking to make sure they could get away with using that shortcut had made the experiment show that there was no difference in performance between the more expensive material and a cheaper one.

There were probably thousands of irregulars, most of them willing to come into treatment and be easily fixed at the expense of the company after the class action lawsuit, resulting from that. The statistician they'd had testify had been very helpful at getting the concepts across by boiling it down to: you don't tell the program to crunch the numbers that way without having it also check the preconditions. Not unless you want a 1/10 on the problem in the intro course I teach. It's on the same menu screen on the program they used, you check those two boxes, click ok, and you're done.

Distributions were invented when they didn't have good computers to simplify the math enough people's heads wouldn't explode trying to do things by hand. We only keep them around so students can learn the basic principles through practice without their heads exploding. Now that we have computers that don't suck we have them do non-parametric calculations for us. This was only a menu option to give the user a quick snapshot of what the data looked like to help figure out how to do the _real_ analysis to check that the picture was accurate, this distribution is classic because it's usually accurate unless the data's so wrong for it someone a week into my class would know better than to use it before they'd even heard of the idea of checking to make sure, and they still messed it up. Who let a manager who'd taken an intro course for business majors sixteen years ago open up a program they'd never seen before and try to figure out the menu options when the company had this much zenny riding on this?

Malice or stupidity, the money and pr losses had killed the company.

The fact that the person who would be performing the analyses the physicists wanted on data this vital was someone who had only just qualified for that level of trust was very, very scary.

"Anyway," Cuff was here about the security issues: physics that made Schrodinger's cat look simple and trying to figure out the odds of humanity going extinct and the best ways to fix the bet were the problems of people with doctorates. "Kilroy's been grabbed, Spin too so she can't sub for him, so since I run the Interpol setup and this is similar they thought I was the best to go here and Crystal's taking my place: no idea who's subbing for him. I don't know who's managing this reshuffling, but I don't envy their headache. Specialties, system compatibility, training, clearance levels and types…" Oh my.

"Why did _Kilroy_ fall unconscious if the problem was with the _Environmental Management System_?" Kilroy wasn't hooked up to it. Right? X had found the concept of people being hooked up to systems creepy enough, but the EMS being linked to HQnet via Kilroy… something that important being linked to something that likely to be attacked? By people who didn't like humans?

If the EMS went down, without weather control normal wind patterns would spread radioactivity to all the carefully cleared areas very, very fast. Reploids would survive that without difficulty: reploids were built to survive uncleared areas.

Humanity, however, was still too close to the edge.

Cuff looked at him, clearly thinking "he's not cleared, but he's X." Perhaps he was an actual reploid, to have that view of him, that he was the trusted father. Or was it that he was family? "That's why Kilroy went unconscious. He had to in order to disengage from the net here. His repair nanites then converted his uplink system into the one that connects to the EMS. They're totally, totally incompatible, and the switchover physically destroyed the necessary hardware to connect to your net. Every single person involved is going to need a replacement unit. His body control systems then remained off to mimic that he was unconscious from a hack attempt. People with the 'destroy' option in case of hacks could stay walking around and pretend things were fine using manual controls, so that's why so few organizations out of the number that had their system monitors used for this noticed it. They either seemed fine or found someplace out of the way and woke up afterwards pretending nothing happened. Kilroy and two more got found unconscious and had to stay that way."

"How many did you have to call up?" Dr. Cain asked warily.

"Everyone with an interface and enough clearance, which is everyone with enough clearance to get an interface from Lament, one with the option for this built in. We've had drills, but this was the first real thing since the surge protector system was finally put into place."

The EMS had been designed to ideally have robot masters hooked into it to manage it, as robot masters had been created to manage systems composed of several robots. Sadly, the parts they could find in storage were barely enough to set up the system itself to gain control of the weather satillites and self-destruct the remaining rampaging robots. The push to set it up had been so desperate, so many dying in the process, that once the basics were in place and they had the breathing room to worry about taking precautions with it they found that there was no one left capable of creating a robot master with all the specialized chips used up and all the program versions as lost to the world as their inventors and copyright holders.

Until X was found, the surge monitoring system had been shut off. There was nothing anyone could do: so there was no point in knowing about every bullet dodged. Then Dr. Smith had turned it back on and started the project of trying to figure out how to use reploids in place of robot masters. X himself was utterly incompatible.

Cuff might not view physics as his problem, but as someone key enough to this system to end up posted to Interpol this was his specialty. "First actual surge since the system was put up: everyone got called in. Lament's blocked a lot of potential ones, as well as some minor surges back before the network option got set up, and this is the third time he's brought Kilroy in to check if a call-up's needed. It was, so then everyone started being called in to be given the game plan. People with the knockouts were called in last, as per the drills, so they'd have time to find someplace to system crash. Prince didn't have enough time even with the delay and headed for a lounge chair to fake sunbathing but someone decided to use throwing a yellow beach ball in the pool as a pick-up line, got angry when he ignored her, and really worried when he didn't wake up when she shook him. Then they started calling around, you and the UN found out Kilroy and Couer were down, and now we need to pretend there was a mass hack." Since that would cause less panic in the streets than a system surge.

"That was what we assumed when Kilroy went down, and so did they. The best lie is one told by someone who doesn't know they are, so it should hold up." Rho nodded, seeming very Kilroyish at the moment: not in the sense of wordplay but in the sense of storytelling. So, Rho was Kilroy's half-brother's half-brother's son? Was there a term for that? There probably was, X would have to look it up.

Oh, so that was what Kilroy had meant by bringing up the Spaceballs reference! "Was that why Kilroy didn't notify me?" Rho frowned. "And what do you mean, third time he's been called in?"

"No, he's called him more than that, usually for thirty seconds or so, whether it's a potential surge or something else he needs a perspective check on. System setup."

"I wasn't aware of that." Rho was, as head of security, displeased that he hadn't been notified. As Kilroy's friend, he was hurt. If there had been warning for things like system setup, why hadn't, "Kilroy could have used me to help cover scheduled periods of unconsciousness."

Cuff was clearly too disciplined to express the measure of his irritation with a superior officer or equivalent thereof with something as juvenile as eye rolling, but the feeling came across clearly that these were Kilroy and Lament. They did things on their own without getting others to help them in a way that was inconsiderate constantly because they didn't take into consideration that some people _wanted_ to be of help to them. "The EMS has been pretty customized by Lament since he was the first one hooked into it and the only one at all for quite a long time. He doesn't perceive the universe the way we mere mortals do, and system interfaces are designed to match someplace the user feels at home in, has in control over, and knows like the back of their hand. When I hooked in for the first test the fact that this was what he thought was normal, or how the universe appeared to him, that he perceived this much on that many levels just as an everyday thing explained a lot, really, and it was fascinating for the half-second before my processor crashed from the data overload. So he needed someone to check on the filters he set up."

"Ah, Lament." Dr. Cain shook his head. "There's an irregular where something went terribly right."

X had been wondering. 'Mere mortals?' Did that mean modern reploids? Then he noticed the key word. "Dr. Lament is an irregular?"

Dr. Cain seemed to take a moment to realize that X had asked that question and remember that X didn't know the answer. Was it something he should have known but was out of the loop for? "Only technically. He's not what his specs say he should be. Dr. Smith tried to repeat what happened, but while Spin's certainly highly intelligent and can master almost anything she's not that much higher, score-wise, than I was before this." Before the accumulated damage from venturing outside the EMS-protected areas on archeological expeditions had triggered the nerve problem that was turning him old before his time. Wait, she! Was Spin his sister?

"Dr. Lament didn't seem _that_ bright at first, but that was because he was still figuring out how to translate. A lot of the higher level human geniuses think in pictures, or spatial relationships, and so on, instead of words and have trouble translating in real time so they come across as slow in a conversation. From what I understand from Dr. Smith's notes, Lament thinks in terms of vibration frequencies and types, not just sound but light, radiation, electricity and so on, and that affects his worldview to the point that he doesn't see matter as solid. Which it isn't, the molecules in my body and in this chair are mostly empty space and I'd fall through it if it weren't for the electric fields, but apparently that's only a sample of how different his worldview is because of the extent he perceives the world not just in different terms, but on a much less simple level than even people who know better do. No wonder he didn't say a word for so long."

Reploid built by Dr. Smith, silent for a long time… No, X should have figured it out after hearing that he was the first to be hooked up to the EMS. "Lament is Yggdrasil?" What?

He should have realized it, but he'd thought that robot masters would turn up out of nowhere with fake identities, like Kilroy had, not be the most thoroughly designed and optimized reploid ever built, not counting X.

Or possibly counting neither X nor Zero?

"He changed it to Lament. Don't ask. Spin did, and he gave her a reading list, told her to finish it, and then ask him for the processor log download when she had five weeks to kill if she cared that much. He doesn't explain things. He tries, but he doesn't really get how stupid we are compared to him. His 'for dummies' versions in words of either two syllables max or exact technical terms and with short sentences we need her to translate. The best he can manage in terms of quick explanation is to give three sentences maximum of obvious hints and let us figure it out, because if we try to repeat his thought process with as much detail and re-analysis as he does for verification as a rule we'd take years. Other than that it's best to just have him tell you what you need to know and what he wants you to do. Thank goodness I'm not a scientist who _needs _to understand how he got his conclusions, although I'm a very good detective and it's a little demeaning to not be able to get the for dummies versions even with a week to kill and a good technical database."

…oh, so that was Omega's problem! If you thought as quickly as he did, then what others contemplated for a few seconds you spent much longer on and understood far more thoroughly. So if you tried to explain the _why_ of something you understood on a very complex level to someone without the time for what you considered an adequate explanation, it would be very frustrating to try to figure out how to get them to understand it on the level they needed to, or you felt was basic, in the time they had. It had to be a workable understanding, but what was a workable understanding to someone with the time to understand everything that deeply? Trying to hit the 'sweet spot' between too complicated for them to understand and simplified to the point of uselessness must be like throwing darts blindfolded, especially if you didn't know how much the person you were talking to understood about the subject. And translating between words and frequencies? It made X's processor hurt just trying to handle the variables involved in calculating the difficulty.

Given that, it was amazing that, "He seemed normal once he started talking." He and Dr. Cain had been there when Yggdrasil had been hooked up to the EMS and activated for the first time, both because it was a landmark event and in case there was any chance whatsoever that they could help if something went wrong. They had been standing (this was while Cain could still walk with the help of a cane) on the dais itself, never mind front row seats.

After Dr. Smith had completed the startup procedures nothing had happened. Worriedly, he'd been verifying that everything was working, but had concluded that it was just interface setup on a vast level: the EMS by necessity was a larger network than anyone would ever contemplate creating for any less vital purpose.

Still, it had been very worrying, waiting there as his internal timer ticked.

A little over ten minutes in, the newborn reploid (theoretically) finally showed the first sign that his body functional.

By bringing his hands up and opening his eyelids a mere moment before his fingers crushed his optics.

That was creepy enough to people who didn't know that destroying the physical component of a sensory network was a last ditch defense against sensory overload. Dr. Smith had fainted and had to be revived, adding to the drama.

They'd reviewed the specs in case of something like that: disconnecting him was a very, very bad idea. So X had to wait still longer as this child of his: though not built by his own hands Yggdrasil was still family one way or another, lay there silently, on the border between the complete destruction of his ability to ever have a personality and life.

Finally, he'd sat up and looked at them, intact eyelids closed and hiding the injury except for traces of fluid leaking from the corners. The iron in the fluid that had flowed to his eyes to give the repair nanites materials to work with oxidized quickly when exposed to air.

Yet despite crying tears of blood Yggdrasil had seemed utterly calm, eerily so, although the simplicity of his statements, lack of emotion, and lack of reaction to things were explained by him being newbuilt. They had no idea what was normal and what was odd, didn't have enough experience with emotion to really get it across, and tended to have difficulty with complex statements, much less complex statements about barely understood developing emotions. He'd taken Yggdrasil as someone of few words and great personal reserve. Great inherent dignity.

As the guardian of the EMS that was how one would want him to be, a rock in the storm, but… He'd been hard to question, one took his words as truth, and even X had not dared to press him.

Still, Yggdrasil being _that_ odd?

On the one hand, the EMS being in such good hands was something you would think they would want people to know. On the other, Yggdrasil's intelligence not being explainable (being hooked to the EMS when he was turned on? Had he been within it all along?) would be scary, to have an unpredictable entity in charge of something so vital.

So Lament was a pseudonym to hide that he was a celebrity, as Kilroy had said.

"When did you find out about his mental capabilities?" How long had it been concealed, first from Dr. Smith, from Dr. Cain, and now from him?

"Dr. Smith was working with him from the beginning, but when he died I was given his files." Dr. Smith had died a couple of months before Ceta had. "I hadn't even looked through them all before, well," you know.

X knew. She'd died, and he'd thrown himself into studying his own systems. There was only so much examination possible without the risk of permanent damage. He hadn't thought of killing himself, Dr. Light had made sure that if someone killed X they wouldn't learn enough from his body to be able to build more innocent children to murder, but there were other things they hadn't done in order to keep him in perfect working order to study his optimal state in hopes of copying it.

Rho had been watching, though. Or maybe Kilroy had, in fact. Rho had been the one to come charging into the lab that night.

After that, X had been on suicide watch, not that he was going to commit suicide but they were worried, until a little after he'd decided to join the hunters. Sigma had been questioning him thoroughly to make sure he wasn't just seeing this as a way to get damaged enough the damage from the tests wouldn't matter.

That was also why Sigma had assigned X to Zero, who was so paranoid about keeping X safe from him that he didn't give X's death wish any opportunity to cause a slip even without knowing about it. If something happened to X, Zero would blame himself and all the hunters would blame Zero as well. X wouldn't let that happen to him, so he watched himself as well as Zero did.

X had known reploids were dying, and they were all his children theoretically, but it was different when it was one built by his own hands. One that he had failed to build well enough because he hadn't known enough to give her the same gifts the father he had never known had given him. He'd failed her.

"He never did replace the eyes," Cain went on while X was thinking this with only a second's pause, trying to move past the difficult moment. "It's symbolic, apparently."

X did a quick search for the meaning of blinding oneself. "Oedipus?" The king had done that when he'd realized that the man he had killed was his father and his queen his mother.

"Seers were blink," Cuff corrected him quickly, creeped out by the whole idea.

"Oh." Yes, that would have been creepy. Father and Mother, two creators, Dr. Light and Dr. Cossack? That had led in odd directions until Cuff had said that was, thank goodness, a wrong tree to bark up. A very wrong one.

"He normally wears a blindfold as part of that, unless he's in disguise."

"In disguise?" Cain and Rho chorused, disbelief evident.

"What? He's a celebrity as Yggdrasil, and Dr. Lament's got to deal with attempts at corporate espionage weekly. If they knew he wasn't a recluse and found him on his world-wandering trips it would drive him up the wall."

"Dr. Lament," Cain said carefully, trying to find a tactful way to do it, "has a presence."

"He's capable of acting like he thinks in the same number of dimensions we do, he can act like a tourist just fine."

"Ah, a tourist." Rho nodded. In the old days, it had been easy to tour the Irregular Hunter base. As security chief, those people had been Rho's problem.

"Sadly, his acting skills are not sufficient to tackle the difficult role of a polite person."

Roles made X think of Omega being both Zero and Lion, which reminded him of something. "Oh dear."

"What is it, X?" Rho's head turned to him in an instant, Dr. Cain focusing on him as well. Oh dear was to X what an obscenity was to others.

X pointed, wordlessly, at Lion.

The other three in the room had no words. X might be okay despite not having specific clearance, yet despite X not having gone to the effort of getting recertified for a bit he was anything but a security risk. An ex-Irregular with a split personality was so, so very not okay. They just hadn't thought about it, just sort of dismissing him as X's pet, or something.

Lion met each of their gazes briefly, uncaring.

"How about I say that quote from Kilroy and we see what Zero remembers. That doesn't talk, so it's not a problem." Dr. Cain, however, thought it might be. Why was Cuff so certain? "Here goes," Cuff started when no one objected. "'So, looks like the lion's out of the bag. If X is giving out animal nicknames, dibs on raven! Though Lament'll probably get that in the end.'"

That was very, very Kilroy. As such, if that wasn't entirely a coded message X would eat his helmet even if that did mean he'd have to get his teeth replaced afterwards.

Hmm. Lion was a big cat. Cat's out of the bag was an old (pre-cataclysm) phrase for a secret being revealed. So they knew X had found out. And since Omega was Lion and both were hidden in Zero that added another possible level. Omega was a member of the family that had been kept secret: Omega had been the one to reveal himself and spill the beans.

Ravens… one for sorrow, two for mirth: that was an old rhyme.

Kilroy was sorry, 'dibs' meant claiming something, so he really wanted X to think of him as someone who was sorry. Lament was also sorry, even more so. Lament meant a cry (or song! Lightbot?) of sorrow, so that was confirmation of the meaning. But the two of them were happy X had found out? He hoped so. From Norse mythology, like the name Yggdrasil was, there were two ravens Hugin and Munin, thought and memory. He was pretty sure that was a component of the message, but he couldn't interpret it at the moment.

In the end was obvious, omega was the last letter.

So, the translation could be, "Omega gave it away? I want you to know I'm sorry, Lament is too, but we're happy that you finally found out. Lament's going to get revenge on Omega for breaking it to you like that, though."

"Raven? You'd think he'd want owl." Classic Kilroy. Not knowing the code Dr. Cain, who X was well aware was smarter than he was, had let that fly right over his head.

"That was what I said, and Lament said an owl has to ask who: he already knows." Cuff didn't get those two either.

Did that mean something, besides Lament being all-knowing?

Lament was in control of an orbital satellite network, and X had thought _Kilroy_ knew all and saw all.

That was when it clicked. "Oh my!"

X actually exclaiming? Not just 'oh dear' but with an actual exclamation mark? That was X's equivalent of the long-lost acronym OMFG, oh my fucking god!

Once again he was the center of attention, but this time he didn't explain. He didn't know if he would have, as that would have meant explaining so much, but his attention was diverted by Lion's head suddenly being absent from his lap and Zero's arms just as suddenly on his shoulders, turning him to let Zero look into his eyes, demanding to know what the problem was, the enemy or threat was with gaze alone.

"What made you wake up that time?" X asked that because you wanted mental state information as soon as possible and he was on scientific autopilot.

"When he started to quote Kilroy, although I have no idea why. What the hell happened? Were you attacked?"

"No," X assured him. "Why would you think that?" The threat of the weapon or anti-X or whatever on earth it was from a normal person's frame of reference?

"The reason I didn't move was that I was playing possum because I_ had_ to do threat analysis and if they didn't know I was awake than I might have thrown off any attacker's threat estimate. I don't think I'm going to be able to be more than five or so feet away from you, maximum. There has to be a reason I'm this paranoid!"


	9. Technology is In

Disclaimer: I don't Rockman, X or otherwise, or anything else Capcom does. Please don't sue.

According to the version in the notebook, this is the second to last chapter, then there will be an epilogue as soon as I decide what to put in it. However, the notebook version can change wildly in length in the process of being mentally revised while being typed up.

* * *

"You have paranoia and you can't delete it?" That was Cain's query. Most other people would have said that in a tone of utter, utter disbelief. Androids, and Reploids, had been built to have absolute free will without the risk of being reprogrammed. That meant that if they wanted to change their minds they could. No compulsions, no programming. There was, however, one catch to this, as Vile demonstrated.

"I can't move farther away from X than five feet because I can't be further away and keep him alive, and I can't let him die because he's my friend. You get it? It's a logic chain. The only way to erase it without knowing why my systems are reaching those conclusions is to delete the first link, and I don't want to stop thinking of X as my friend." Zero's… friend? Amazing progress, and brought a smile to X's face despite the circumstances.

Rho was clearly considering ordering, no, wrong department, asking Sigma to order Zero to delete that. That, that murderer! Daring to think of himself as X's friend? Like hell Rho wanted someone likely to flip out at any time following his father twenty-four/seven! He'd had enough words with Sigma over the training alone, and probably had been the reason why there was always, always off-station shift security practicing in the training rooms during that time. The hunter work day was divided between on-call, at-post and time spent preparing for duty, like training and so on.

"I don't want you to either, Zero." Zero's arms hadn't left X's shoulders when he'd turned to speak to Dr. Cain, and now he looked back, caught between relief that X was okay with Zero considering him a friend (honestly, as though he hadn't been making that clear!) and stress.

"But the tabloids!" was Zero's cry. Then he seemed to remember that oh, he'd seen Rho when he'd turned to face Cain. "You!" He got up, striding forcefully over to him but was forced to stop at the limit of those five feet and was stuck there, impotent and glaring. He clearly, or clearly if you had X's senses and could check his buster readiness, wanted to shoot that grin off his face if he couldn't punch it off, but even with X's protection, even with this newfound courage and confidence, grappling with a fellow officer was one thing but actually shooting was another.

"Kilroy?" Rho asked, grinning.

"You knew he knew?" X raised an eyebrow: Kilroy had implied the method would get him in trouble. Oh! He'd known by his system access, and he'd have ended up in jail if he let random people know about the interface system and what it did.

"He's the one that gave me the idea. I thought he'd gone soft, but that was great!" Rho, Rho, Rho. The boy never did have any sense of self-preservation. He knew how upset X was, and he was rubbing it in?

"You!" Zero growled, meaning it far more than when he had at Kilroy. He was angry, Rho was making it worse, what was he thinking?

If Zero fired, he would be kicked out of the hunters. Not even Sigma could prevent that. Since he couldn't leave the base for obvious reasons, he'd be relegated to lab rat status again. That would destroy him. Losing his chance for redemption because he lost his self control and did something so violent and irrational: X didn't think even he could bring him back after that, despite Zero's amazing resilience under the circumstances.

Kilroy had said that the comment had been a joke, not a hint to Rho, but if Rho was used to Kilroy and hidden meanings, then, well. He thought his best friend had finally stopped having loyalties that should not be divided, had given him the perfect way to drive the killer of his lover and friend out of the organization he had murdered so many of. "Rho," X started calmly.

"Don't worry, the circus will blow over?" Rho thought X was upset because he was embarrassed by this? Wordlessly, narrowed eyes saying that he thought that Rho wasn't even capable of understanding words of one syllable, he gestured at himself, shifted the focus to Zero, and then slowly waved the hand back and forth, sketching the distance between them on the ground.

I do not care about the tabloids, Rho. Not only have you failed to grasp that, do you honestly think this will blow over with Zero glued to my side?

X was very, very disappointed in him. Rho jerked, shocked and hurt that X would care about Zero enough to be angry at his own son. Dr. Cain was highly amused and Cuff seemed familiar with and amused by this sort of interaction to the point of nostalgia. "How much got released?" X wasn't going to lecture Rho now. He wasn't going to try to get him to understand what he had done wrong, why it was wrong, and give him an opportunity to get back into X's good graces. Normally, he would drop everything to instruct a child on this serious an issue, but, his question informed Rho, taking care of Zero was more important now. Rho would just have to think about what he had done and wait until X had time for him and his immaturity.

"Just a few seconds of you petting him?" Rho offered in a small voice, and it was effective placation.

Rho could have released the footage of Zero attacking the guards, acting like a wild animal, so many damaging things that would have ignited a wildfire of public outcry demanding that Zero be contained somewhere safely away from X. Instead, he had showed Lion as a tame Lion, not a threat. X should have figured that out from the public reaction being interest in them as a couple instead of demands to have Zero taken apart.

So, actually, that was still wrong, still immature, but he'd just tried to embarrass him a bit when, yes, he could have driven Zero out and to the brink so very easily if that had been his intention. "Could we try telling the media that I was helping him with his hair and that you are very sorry for releasing such an out-of-context clip as a prank on Zero?" They would be talking about this later, yes, but X was sorry he had thought so badly of Rho and Rho was relieved that X found him worthy of consideration again.

"There was an all-base alert about him, and you were doing his hair? I think we can say the split personality, or something along those lines, is public knowledge by now." Dr. Cain looked at Cuff for confirmation.

Cuff nodded. "I'm more interested in those hair care nanites someone was talking about on the way."

"Hair care nanites?" Zero was lost at sea now.

"Zero, how did you think your hair stayed so nice?" X asked, actually curious. He'd never thought about it, and he should have.

"Um, I wash it every other day with shampoo like you're supposed to?" Zero was still adrift, with no knowledge that the cloud his origin cast over his life had a golden lining.

"Our theory is that the hydrocarbon-filled strands with the odd structures are to make nanites," Dr. Cain explained.

"I have nanites just to take care of my hair? My builder really did want a girl, didn't he?" Zero was so very, very sick of fembot jokes.

"You could just try the truth," Cuff, the detective, suggested.

"What truth? That my inner self is a catgirl?"

"No, Zero," X answered calmingly. "They think you were built as a bodyguard." Oh, but he hadn't been. An android, meant to have the same freedom to choose from limitless potential futures, selves and options: he wanted Zero to know that he had never been just a tool. But not right now.

Why not? Only family here, except possibly Cuff.

Zero paused. "That makes one hell of a lot of sense, but it doesn't explain why it wants to be pet."

"Sensors."

"Sensors?" Zero blinked, then paused. Oh, right. Zero might have been a lab rat but he didn't understand enough to be able to draw the obvious conclusions from that word. X really was starting to think he'd been rather rude to Omega, not understanding the difficulty. "What the hell is that?" Zero wasn't pausing to think, he had paused to check his sensors, since X had mentioned them.

"What is what?" This reminded X of Omega: the same sort of seeing without optics being involved, though Zero's lenses were trying to get something in focus: something beyond the walls.

"The…" Zero hesitated, knowing this was going to sound really weird, but it was weirding him out and he wanted help. "The black-purple skulls that smell like, like a field of corpses and glow with a light that makes everything look wrong, twisted enough you feel like it's twisting you just looking at it?" Zero's gaze first looked through the walls, moving, seeing one and another and another, then he looked away, wondering about his sanity and not helped by the fact that, "You don't see them?"

They didn't.

"Oh hell, now I'm hallucinating." Zero gave up, flopping down on the couch and leaning on the armrest nearest X. "They're, gah! Why do I taste them?" He spat, trying to get rid of a sensation that was making him literally nauseous, X's sensors confirmed.

"Unintegrated sensory data." X and Dr. Cain exchanged nods. "Hear anything?"

"It's like someone's playing a bad horror movie in the next room. And your couch feels like it's falling apart."

"That's what happens when you get data from a new sensory system that you don't have software set up properly to handle. It gets converted by base programming and spread across all the ones you have," X explained. "So given that you have base programming below conscious level and how that ties into it you're probably not hallucinating."

"I should be really relieved to hear that but I wish I was. How do I get this to make sense? Because if this is subconscious interpretation, then whatever I'm getting readings on is bad."

"The usual method is to shut down the input from a sense that does have software to handle it. Then, it all will automatically go to the software for that sense while you adapt the programming to handle this new sense. Then, when you have it down, you turn the other sense back on and restore an unedited copy of the software for it." That was what Lament had done, or Yggdrasil. Or… would Dr. Light have given a robot master such a somber name?

Zero frowned, unable to decide which sense. He only had software for touch, sight, sound, and smell/taste from Dr. Cain. Despite that, he was the first to notice the look on Cuff's face. "What?"

"Oh?" Cuff looked like his mind had been a million miles, or maybe a hundred years, away. "Sorry, I was remembering something. You're going to have to go with sight, sorry. It's used for everything from infrared to radiation detecting, so the program's the most versatile."

"But how will I tell where things are?" Things? Zero wasn't just worried about doors and furniture. He didn't want to fight blind.

"Sonar?" Cuff suggested.

"I don't have… what the hell?" Zero's optics switched to split vision as a menu only he could see was presented to him through that sense.

"You have sonar?" With all those fancy capabilities, of course Omega had something that basic installed. The question was, did _Zero_ have sonar?

"I have capabilities I don't even recognize the names of!"

"That's great!" X would have hugged him if he'd been a child or okay with that sort of thing. "We're making a lot of progress on getting you full control over your body!" That must have been the setting changes Omega had mentioned. But what about Omega?

_Was_ it Zero's body? Lion had been a, a bodyguard? Yes, he was. An autopilot to protect Omega from being destroyed while his mind slept. Zero's OS had been installed by Dr. Cain. Omega seemed to not mind him, but he'd said that Zero would end up being destroyed no matter what and Zero had also said that.

"Oh, sweet!" Zero had barely noticed what X said. "Take this, Rho!"

Rho found himself flying up into the ceiling, dropping down to the floor, flying up again… He made various 'oof!' noises of complaint, but the way he decelerated before impact despite how fast the movement seemed to be showed he wasn't being actually hurt. Distance antigravity? The stuff of science fiction, but maybe this was applying the same principle Kilroy had used. At least Zero doing it repeatedly let X get data on how the acceleration and deceleration rates appeared, and… oh my.

Short-range transmissions of energy set up to converge and convert to kinetic on target. Dr. Cain was moving towards Rho and X had to signal him to stop: moving between the source and endpoint of a transmission of that much power might fry his chair. "Do you know how you are doing that?" X wasn't able to figure out how much processor capacity it took to calculate the necessary precision or the power necessary to pull it off. He was missing several variables, but the answer could probably be put in layman's terms as lots and lots.

"It's called DMtABF. I don't know what it stands for, though. I looked up what it did because I wanted to find out. I can't believe there's an entire subfolder with applications written for dealing with annoying people!" Zero was divided between fascination with the potential and the clear belief that whoever had done that had way too much time on his hands.

Well, yes, Omega did.

"D…" Cuff seemed to think his memory banks contained something similar and was hitting the search function.

"Zero, I know you're irritated, but this not the time and place for something this childish, no matter that Rho started it." Dr. Cain felt compelled to spoil Zero's fun, and Zero let Rho stay on the floor.

"Draco Malfoy!" Cuff exclaimed, search function having finally found something.

"Who?" Dr. Cain lacked a copy of the encyclopedia in his skull, although there was one in his chair's computer. Asking was quicker.

"A character in a series of children's books that were very popular in the decade or so before the cataclysm."

"DM, Draco Malfoy, t, the?" Zero had refused to install his copy. He'd rather not know, no thank you.

"Draco Malfoy the Amazing Bouncing Ferret. There was a scene a bit like this, only Rho wasn't turned into a ferret."

"The application's still in progress, which is why there wasn't any documentation." Bad programming form, that. In progress applications really needed explanations of what they were doing and how. "That would have been icing on the cake." Too bad. "So my builder was a fanboy of ancient books as well as ancient parts?"

"Hmm?" Rho asked.

"Zero was built mainly from antique, pre-Cataclysm parts," Dr. Cain explained.

"Apparently by someone rich enough to have them, crazy enough to waste them on a bodyguard, and enough of a bastard to hoard them."

Rho managed not to ask why Zero hadn't been taken apart for those valuable parts instead of having an OS installed, which would have made it murder instead of putting down an animal. They'd wanted to figure out the tricks and find the hoarder. Did they have more?

Where had these parts been when the world had been searching for a way to build more robot masters?

In a sleeping android, in a capsule, waiting to be woken up just like X.

Waiting for people who had never come, and X now thought he knew where they'd been all that time. It made sense, he could understand why people might have done it, but it was still horrible.

"Did he start off with a trophy wife design?" Rho really, really couldn't resist. He'd been around Kilroy too long. Although Omega had said something about Kilroy choosing that name being a sign of being around Lament too long. This sort of thing, though, really didn't fit with X's few but strong memories of the dignified, otherworldly Yggdrasil. Was there something else going on? Of course, if 'Lament' really had been… Then the reploid Yggdrasil might still exist.

Cuff's outburst of laughter overwhelmed Zero's attempt at a low, dangerous response. He was guffawing so hard his body shook. Amidst the gales of laughter they could hear, "trophy… wife… girlybot… always wanted a daughter… they're gonna…" Noticing that everyone was staring at him, he managed to calm down. "Sorry," one last laugh, "long story."

"It sounds like a good one?" X did want to know stories, especially what might be family stories. Hadn't Cossack had a daughter, though? Had the others called Omega a girlybot? That was mean.

"Have you met Lament's sister Spin?" Dr. Cain and Rho nodded. "Zero looks a lot like her. That Char said once that he'd make her his trophy wife after he beat up her brother, and she said she'd rip his metaphorical balls off if he tried and then he'd be the female his builder had never made."

So this was before Dr. Cossack had made Zero? A bot trying to beat a Lightbot's brother? Was this during the fourth war? He'd liked her but they'd been on opposite sides. On the one hand, tragic. On the other, it was hard to fit that scene in X's image of those more, more wise times. It looked like his and Megaman's sister hadn't been any sort of shy, cowardly reclusive damsel just because she'd been built to look female. He did want to hear more. "Why girlybot?" That had been part of the words he'd found so hilarious. Also, girly_bot_, although X didn't emphasize the syllable.

"Because Char's always going on about how he's the strongest and her entire rant also included a bit about him being an over-elaborate yet still obsolete before he was turned on piece of scrap metal consisting of nothing but useless ornamental stuff that just looked and sounded pretty and was he sure he wasn't a female model, because he had so many useless frills he was either one or wanted to be one… I wasn't there, so I don't know the exact words, but she called him a girlybot at some point and it stuck." Omega was also very elaborate, very on the cutting edge, more so than X's 'versatile and reliable' simple design. Simple compared to what _Dr. Light_ could have done in terms of elaborate systems optimized for various things, anyway. He'd wanted X to have a strong foundation and choose what to build on it. That was very touching, but so was Omega's builder's desire to make sure his child had as much as possible, trying to give him everything he might need.

"And then Lament showed up and said, 'Hello Girlyman.' It was classic. I wish I'd been there." Cuff clearly deeply regretted his absence, and was also not entirely happy about something else. "I don't know what she sees in him, or why Lament let Kilroy stalk him so easily when it took me months sometimes to track him down to deliver a damn letter. That whole family…" Cuff cut off what was clearly an old rant about a long held grudge over a huge amount of piled-up offenses and looked at Zero apologetically, hoping he wasn't giving offense.

So Cuff wasn't a Cossackbot?

That glance also meant that yes, Zero, Char, Kilroy and Lament as well were related and Cuff knew it. So Cuff might be a Lightbot?

Might be X's brother?

There had been other people in the world who had built robot masters: the sixth war had happened when there had been a tournament, robot masters built for combat competing: the prize for their owners (they had been owned…) had been money, but for many if them the real prize must have been to meet Megaman, to maybe earn his respect and to fight alongside him.

Then Wily had stolen the champions and turned them against their hero. He'd said 'her brother' about maybe-Megaman, after all, so Cuff might not be a long-lost brother.

Something out of storybooks, but then those days were the subject of so many of them.

X's eyes caught and held Cuff's. "I want to talk to you, alone." It was not a demand, it was a request, but they both knew X had every right to make it and deserved to have it granted.

"No!" Zero forbade it.


	10. Distinguishable From

Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman, X or not, or anything else trademarked by Capcom or otherwise owned. Please don't sue.

Someone just called Irregularity the best story they had ever read on fanfiction dot net. It's flattering, but failing to compute. A fellow fan of that style? I don't know, but it's not even a particularly good example of the style. Ah, well. De gustibus non disputandem est. I'm happy they liked it, in any case.

* * *

It took X a moment to realize that Zero's objection wasn't to X talking with Cuff: it was to the idea of having X talk with him alone, without Zero there to protect him. Zero certainly had a right to know too. "Could Zero and I talk with you then, Cuff?"

Cuff nodded, examining them and clearly rethinking whatever plan he'd had for breaking the news. "Rho, Dr. Cain, could we have some privacy for a moment?" X asked, and knew how strange the question was, the idea was, when he saw the looks on their faces.

"Why don't you want us to hear this conversation?" Rho had no idea. X had never met this guy before, neither had Zero. "Is it something to do with Kilroy?" It was, and Rho had a right to know about his best friend, but it wasn't just that.

Dr. Cain was his step-father, Rho his son. X already had family, family that had looked after him all his life, and he was chasing after the ones who had ignored him and leaving them out of it. They had a right to know too.

Yet, maybe he understood now why they had waited so long to tell him. He should have told Dr. Cain immediately, and he felt guilty that he hadn't, and the longer he waited the guiltier he would feel and the more disappointed they would be that he hadn't trusted them with this. Still, until he knew what was going on, he didn't know how to break it to them. If Cuff were to reveal all this now, Rho would go ballistic. How dare they abandon his father like that! The screaming would make it rather hard to find things out.

They were wondering even more the longer he went without explaining things to them. He didn't want to lie, not even by omission, but this wasn't the time for a huge explosion of family drama, not with Zero this paranoid and Slur awake, not to mention the evil energy and so much else. "It's not anything bad," he assured him. "It's just that Kilroy told me something, and that reminded me of something else, and it's a little…" It was complicated, "If I get confirmation that it's okay and so on I'll tell you, since it's certainly fine for you to know. It's about Kilroy's family, Rho, so I don't know if they'd want you to be told something that's just speculation by me, although I hope Kilroy would be willing to tell you about it himself when it's been sorted out."

Oh, X was being considerate and overly concerned about people's feelings. That wasn't odd at all. Part of the reason X was someone that no one had a problem revealing secrets to was that he would never risk abusing that trust. "Could I," X asked Cuff, "just ask a few questions now, and we can talk more later? With so much going on, I really need to find out what's wrong with Zero." X realized that he had just said that he, not Dr. Cain, would find out. Dr. Cain seemed to have picked up on this as well, smiling in a way X hadn't seen in too long.

"I've also got stuff to do. It's possible that someone took advantage of Kilroy's absence to play around with the net. It could just be problems with the switch to manual. Someone called Twig's efforts to get around Kilroy's attempt to conceal that he was down involved doing some things to hamper the interface-user's control over the system," and it got more technical from there. "It could be an actual problem, though." He looked at Zero seriously when he said that, and Zero nodded in recognition of the warning. Turning back to X, he told him that, "I can talk while trying to debug this without any problem."

How should X put this without Dr. Cain and Rho, who were both bright people and knew that X was asking questions to try to figure something out about someone who was both a friend and very vital to the organization, putting the clues together? "How do you know Dr. Lament?" He shouldn't say 'how are you related:' it was possible Cuff was covered as another creation of Dr. Smith but the two observers would wonder why X would think that he was if he actually wasn't. Or Cuff wasn't, whoever he really was might be. He had to think about both levels. Well, it had to be easier than keeping hard drives and nanites compatible.

Cuff smiled, some fond memories there although there was a wry twist that said that he hadn't been very fond of it at the time. "He used to hang out at our place a lot. He got along well with my father and sister before the explosion. He's, well, they know what he's like, but his elemental weakness is to cute. She was adorable."

X smiled at the joke, though it looked like Cuff had also lost family in an explosion. Elemental weaknesses were a serious issue, though. Since when one was designing a reploid one had to work within a maximum weight, volume, and budget, optimizing one thing meant skimping on something else. A reploid that worked underwater needed very, very good protection against it. That often meant that in order to optimize their armor for that the designers reduced the protection against something else. Most hunters had general protection against everything, as X did, but the issue was that specialization increased efficiency. You didn't want a reploid generalist having to fight an underwater specialist when the one designed for it would have such a huge advantage, being in their element. So many things to take into consideration.

Sadly, even the best armor nowadays usually had at least one weak point. X's didn't.

Did Zero's?

Did Cuff's?

Ceta had died because her armor wasn't good enough. Why hadn't they at least helped him find out how to protect his own daughter? X could forgive his own hurt, but his child's death required an explanation.

Later. He wouldn't get upset now. Not in front of Rho.

So, Cuff was a Cossackbot, as the Cossacks were the robot master creator and human daughter? And not Lament's relative? Or was that part just cover to explain why the anti-social Lament would consider people he supposedly wasn't related to family? Or, father and daughter could maybe also mean Dr. Light and Roll?

"How did you meet him?"

"My sister. She used to always get separated from us at amusement parks and one time she ended up getting locked into one of the cages at Skull Fortress." That was an amusement park's name, yes, but they weren't talking about the amusement park, now were they. "We were all going crazy with worry, they ended up calling the cops and I worked for a local PD back then, so man was that embarrassing, and we thought father was going to keel over at one point. Then he showed up out of nowhere with her, rescuing the doctor's daughter from the depths of madman's fortress just like in the stories, and she was his fangirl after that." Just like in the stories. Kalinka. "It took ages for her to wear him down and she was asking everyone to try to give him letters for her because he was all over the place with no forwarding address. We didn't know about the EMS thing then, so we couldn't send them there." They hadn't known about it because it hadn't been built yet: that was the real meaning, not that they hadn't known that Lament was Yggdrasil.

So yes, he was a Cossackbot. "Oh, I thought at first you were one of Kilroy's relatives, but you said 'that family.' How are they involved with Lament?"

From the look on Cuff's face, the answer was both "hell no!" and "you haven't already figured that out?"

A family Cossack's creations had reason to dislike that Cuff thought X should have known about from the beginning.

Zero, Omega, had been built by the infamous Dr. Wily.

Doctor Wily had created the thing that was in control of the mavericks!

"X, what's going on?" Dr. Cain knew that look. That was a 'eureka!' and not a good one.

"Yeah," Rho sighed. "Lament's only installing systems in people he likes. Jerk."

"What's wrong?" Zero asked flat out: Cain, at least, had picked up on the fact X wanted to hide his reaction.

"It's nothing."

"No." Zero was not accepting that. "It's something." X was trying to find a way to answer that demanding gaze when it became slightly unfocused.

"Zero?" X was the one who knew that something bad was going on and wanted to know about it now.

"Okay…" Not good, very not good. He was clearly regretful, but he was going to have to do it anyway. "I don't want to trust sonar that just showed up out of the depths of my crazy systems, but I need to be able to figure out what is going on with that stuff right fucking now." Zero rarely used language, and that wasn't even a curse word: no exclamation. Yet this was something that deserved swearing, he just didn't know why yet. He closed his eyes, but before he deactivated them he paused. "Why am I hearing it instead of seeing it? It's still both? I have a specialized sensory program for this?" This, that jerk, eyes flying open, was an exclamation, but Zero didn't have the time to waste on swear words. "It just felt me hearing it."

"Are you sure you're not hallucinating? I mean, purple skull things. What does it look like to that program?" Rho was doubtful, but X remembered that the park was named _Skull_ Fortress for a reason.

"Pure, concentrated _not right_." Zero's eyes opened before the first word came out and he had grabbed X's arm, hauled him upright, and started striding towards the exterior wall before they finished. "We have to get out of here now."

"What on earth?" Dr. Cain asked, though he looked like he wouldn't mind a demonstration of the monofilament door-making ability.

Rho's com chimed. "What's our status?"

"Too late." The voice's song of sadistic glee sent a chill down X's spine.

Boom.

X's eyes had shut by reflex.

When he opened them, he saw that his couch had exploded. He was rather unhappy about that. It had been a gift from the four of his children that had founded the hunters when he moved into 'their place' along with Cain. Ceta had picked it out, as there was a bit of a running joke that as q female model she had an inherent ability to do stuff like that, although heaven knew Delta should not have been allowed to redesign her exterior without getting a second opinion other than that of the person she was paying to make the alterations. X had refused to do cosmetics after he saw only a bit of what she'd had in mind, but he hadn't wanted to hurt her feelings by saying it was those alterations in specific he'd objected to.

The couch had been a very nice green, though. Apparently it went well with the colors of his armor and brought out his eyes. They had written little notes on it before presenting it to him, then Dr. Cain had added one and all the others had as soon as they'd managed to visit.

There were even in-jokes about that couch, about a father was king of his family and it was X's throne.

It couldn't be replaced. Ceta couldn't sign another one. He was rather angry now at whoever had done that. Weren't things, according to something he'd read once, tinted red when you were truly angry? He hit his search function and opened his mouth to ask Dr. Cain if he had any idea about…

The yellow tint was a force field that surrounded Zero with a diameter of about eight feet.

Zero was shaking him.

Dr. Cain, Rho, and Cuff were dead. Killed by a bomb that must have been placed under his couch to kill him. There were pieces everywhere. Would they be able to find all of theirs? Just like Ceta.

All his fault, just like Ceta.

"X, we have to get out of here!" Zero's voice came as though from a great distance, a sign of how low on the priority list X had put sonic input.

He corrected that. "Omega." His voice was far too calm, he noted, eerily so.

The yellow shield suddenly became opaque. "Yes?" Omega could take control so easily now?

He didn't care about that. He cared about, "What is going on and how do I stop it." That wasn't a question, that was an order to tell him, now, and he could just put some work into it!

"I really don't think it can be stopped, although our brother is determined to delay it."

Damn it, he'd better stick to yes or no questions, and he did not have the time or patience for twenty questions! "Lament is Protoman?"

"Yes, but he preferred Blues in human language."

X did not care right now. "And Cuff was created by Dr. Cossack."

"Cossackbot, yes, and his name was Ringman."

Why on earth did Omega think X would care about terminology at a time like this! "And you were created by Dr. Wily to kill me. And Blues, and Slur. But not Megaman?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

He did not want to do detective work right now! Yet Omega seemed to think that him figuring out this himself would work better than one of Omega's explanations, and X had to agree.

Omega had said X was fated to be second. Megaman had been the first of Dr. Light's creations, #001. Then he'd found out about his long-lost brother Protoman.

"I'm not a hero, and I'm a reploid. You said Kil-Shadowman? He wasn't."

"Dr. Light was killed before he completed X's construction. Yet I awaken and here you are. I suspect this is our brother's doing. He is oddly preoccupied with fate."

"Weren't all the robot masters killed?"

"Yes, they were."

"By who?" X remembered his theory when he asked that, the one about where they had been all this time, and wished he'd phrased it differently because he might not want to hear the answer.

"Slur."

His theory might still be right, it probably was, and it shouldn't matter but it still made him feel a little better that they hadn't been killed by humanity. No time to be relieved. "Who's Slur?"

"An alien."

"An _alien_?" _What?_

"Zero was right, we really should leave." What was going on outside the shield? An instant later it disappeared, and X knew that they weren't in his quarters anymore.

"Why are we in the Environmental Management System?" Yes, it was a key place, the center of the world and the center of this, but why specifically? X knew the huge hall, everyone did although few actually saw it in person. For something built at such a frantic pace it was oddly artistic in design, from the androgynous thirty-meter-tall robot (master?) holding the swirling green and white orb that powered it as though it was Atlas supporting the world, ready to defend the system against attack if someone were insane enough to want to destroy the world it held, to the somewhat egg-shaped substructures with the symbols indicating their function.

He hadn't realized that they looked like slightly disguised capsules. It simply hadn't occurred to him.

Far beneath the earth's surface, the warmth that came with being near the molten core coupled with the shadows made this place feel womblike. The only light came from that orb.

That was wrong. This place was always brightly lit and crawling with technicians.

Oh, god! What if the system was down! What he was learning said that things should be safe but what he had learned over his entire life was the enormity of the disaster that would happen if it did go down. He had no idea what, if anything, he had hoped to accomplish by dashing towards it, but he didn't find out as Omega's hand landed on his shoulder and held him back, causing X to abort the movement as Omega addressed the echoing room. "Come out, brother." His hand squeezed X's shoulder, just a little, and the reassurance meant a lot even if it didn't reassure him of anything but that Omega was at least trying to help.

Omega's answer was a chuckle, one that echoed oddly even in this place of odd echoes. "No one else can tell that I'm watching them. You are Omega. I've met Zero, actually. He had no idea that I wasn't who I said I was."

"He considered you more biting than most doctors but far less sadistic. Perceptive of him." Omega stepped forward, almost touching X's shoulder yet still standing behind him, guarding his back. "Still, knowing you were watching us isn't something praiseworthy. We're here, of course you're watching us." X could feel Omega's grin as he leaned forward slightly, head pointed towards a place where the hands of the guardian robot blocked the orb's light, casting shadows on the wall. "Or perhaps I should say, we're us, of course you're watching us, Alpha."

"Alpha?" Someone else? X had thought doctor meant Lament, but maybe not?

"DRN 000, model name Protoman. Albert wanted to call me Alpha instead. I decided to be called Blues. Among other names."

"Why?" X had to ask, and regretted making it that general an instant later.

"You weren't in that capsule for a hundred years, only thirty. And you're X, not Rock, though you could consider yourself his reincarnation if you like." A figure stepped forward: not Yggdrasil's browns and greens, not his stately height. He was shorter than X, even, but the first robot masters had been built child-size to avoid weight being a problem, or so he'd heard. Still, X would have expected something… more for the first one. The armor, everything, was so very simplistic. Red and grey, a black visor shielding his eyes.

X had heard about the yellow scarf. It looked very, very jarring. Not just that it was a scarf, an unnecessary bit of human clothing on a form that looked so very robotic, but that it was a scarf. An ordinary, knit scarf that was simply being scarf-like. No dramatic flaring in the wind, a proud flag of independence. It just hung there. It looked very, very odd. Eccentric. The fact it was ordinary made it look wrong on, on a robot.

Was that the point?

"And because of her up there, the drama queen." His hand pointed irreverently to the orb, which flared. "Yes, you are a drama queen."

"Wily set my hidden backup station to revive me in a century, long after X's descendants would have grown secure and soft." Omega's voice was neutral.

"And then you would have used the virus to make them yours." Virus? X hadn't seen the shield on Blues' back before he removed it and placed it so that he could lean against it, seemingly nonchalant and planning to be here for awhile.

"Only you were the one to awaken me, not him after he had finalized the virus. Since it wasn't finalized, when Slur passed by to find any traces of the stuff Duo had missed she detected it, came to earth to find it, and found humanity. For your sake," Omega leaned forward now, speaking into X's ear, "Duo did not destroy humanity, although it was his duty to do so. He trusted in your ability to keep them from destroying the planet, and the robot masters along with it. Slur, however, made no exceptions." Omega pulled back, facing Blues again. "I truly wonder what you were thinking."

"The Cataclysm was inevitable."

Protoman, Protoman the hero had woken Omega up knowing that this would make an enemy come to try to wipe out the human race? And another alien had relied on Megaman to save the earth? Relied on him?

The conversation continued around him. "If not Slur, me." What was Omega saying?

"Yes." No, Omega wouldn't have done something like that, right?

"So why go to all that trouble when destiny just found another to fill my place?"

"Because you deserved the chance to choose another destiny."

"You and your insistence on the existence of both free will and inevitable destiny." Omega found this an amusing foible, clearly, even though they were talking about billions of deaths.

"The fact they're mutually exclusive working from a four dimensional unidirectional frame of reference doesn't mean they're not both real. Isn't it frustrating to be a rational being in an irrational plane of existence?"

"That's why I've never even tried to hold a conversation with a human. I can't believe you wasted all that time on learning to play chess."

"Learning to play chess?" That was the first question X managed to ask, because it involved something that wasn't either beyond his depth or horrible.

"Deep Blue lost all the rematches. Badly," Blues informed him when X asked why Blues had to work to learn chess when a non-sentient computer's victory over a human chess master was such a landmark. "Chess was designed with a limited board, piece count, and move set so that it would be modelable by the human brain. Someone with the right brain structure and experience could imagine a theoretical chain of over twenty moves in advance, although there's almost never any point to going that far as amateurs are too unpredictable and experts too able to disrupt your predictions for it to be worth the effort. That makes chess poker without the luck: it's all about studying your opponent. Kasparov didn't think he could understand a computer at first. Once he realized he could, and it wasn't able to understand him in return, he won.

"On the other hand, I was the first AI to win at Go. Go isn't modelable, at least not easily. Humans learn a set of commonly good strategies and select from that list. Computers are logical, and that means looking at all the options instead of just what your preconceptions say are right. However, since I can model Go, that meant that no human stood a chance against me: my moves were optimum ones that didn't match the strategies they knew so I was utterly unpredictable and they couldn't counter my moves or match my ability to find the perfect ones. Therefore, chess, which required understanding humans, was the real challenge. I found a teacher who didn't know my real identity and he had no idea why I was so good in theory but terrible in practice even though I could beat the practice programs." A wry smile, though that tilt of the head spoke of the weakness having been long since overcome. "It became an ego thing, really. I refused to lose the most intellectual game to a race whose intelligence is a hardware accessory beta test version that is barely compatible with the main system."

That was a rather mean thing to say, and X didn't want to believe he had wanted humanity wiped out but his unhappiness clearly showed clearly, as Blues told him, "Yes, it's rude, but it's the truth. Their software has no idea why a cd drive is trying to act as though it's the hard drive. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to me, since I was created to help lesser beings with software and hardware problems so they could accomplish their goals, but I decided not to do anything about it. They don't want to be fixed, and I have no right to just design a retrovirus or something. There was a period when I was very tempted, but I had just had my own mind extensively tampered with by someone with no right and it was the same thing."

"I'm sorry," X told him, remembering all the stories of why he had been created immune to reprogramming.

"You weren't alive yet." Megaman hadn't? Or X?

"So that was why." Omega seemed to have put something together. Moving to a different topic, he asked, "How are you managing to translate so well into terms he understands? I've been having a terrible time."

"I spent the last century with Roll as my self-appointed official translator, and they're not twins for nothing. They have the same frame of reference. Once an AI lab research assistant, always a research assistant, it seems."

"If I'm Megaman, why don't I remember being him?" X didn't want to get even further sidetracked, as tantalizing as that glimpse at family was. Roll was Spin?

"He would have ended up with you anyway, Omega." As for X, "Reincarnations typically don't remember."

"If we both died, why am I a reploid and Kilroy is still a robot master?"

"Destiny. In what would have happened, X's construction was completed before your death and you still ended up as him. You know the experiment that proves that cause and effect aren't absolute. Time's not sequential, it just looks that way. If you look at it from the real frame of reference, free will and destiny become the same thing. You can't change fate as an individual all that much because while you have free will so do all the other people, laws of physics, nouns in general who create destiny by the choices of their own free will. You chose to become a reploid. Not in so many words, you were trying to stop the Cataclysm or die permanently trying both times, but you did."

"And you didn't stop him from ceasing to be one of your children." Omega clearly considered that stupid enough he couldn't believe Blues had done it. "Like you didn't stop her from dying."

"It was Rock's choice: it was Kalinka's choice. We've had this discussion, Omega. Love isn't controlling them, coddling them, smothering them. Love is respecting them and their decisions." That scarf had added an irreverent air, the normalcy and boringness of it keeping X from realizing, really getting, who he was talking to. Perhaps that was why the scarf. Because it was normal, and he must have wanted to be treated like a person. Was that why Dr. Light had given it to him? "No matter how much you suffer for it."

This was the first robot master. Someone over a century old. An ancient hero. Living history. As his head tilted forward, hidden eyes clearly capturing Omega's, pinning them with steeled will and tempered wisdom, the scarf fled X's mind, and he felt so very, very young, so very ignorant, so very much like he did not belong in this place of titans.

"They knew it was certain death," Blues continued, X only a spectator even though this was, was him they were talking about. "But they would not, could not let their fathers die without at least trying to save them. If I had held them back, if they had been left alive, the guilt would have killed them far more painfully than she did."

X was the only one to glance at the orb as he said that, though Omega had no response.

The green light that had once seemed pure and soothing was anything but now that he knew its true nature.


	11. Magic & Vice Versa

Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman (X) or any of the other many things Capcom owns. Please don't sue.

Good lord, I thought I'd managed to fix the confusing sentence structure problem. I know what I'm saying when I write them, so it makes sense to me at the time, but if even _I_ need a moment to make the right connections between parts of a sentence's structure there's a problem.

Another issue is that I tend to get too IC, or in these AU things too IC for these versions of the characters (if not for canon), and that means since Alpha & Omega don't have to worry about it and, in X's case, are supposed to be confused by the wording, I kind of have a license to go nuts that I need to stop abusing.

People talk in run-on sentences. Transcribe an interview and how unnatural what looks normal in text really is becomes painfully obvious. The issue is naturalness vs. readability.

In terms of 'what would have happened if Robot Masters stayed around?' take a look at what happened to reploids after (and during) the ELF wars.

* * *

"There are worse things than death?" It seemed a rhetorical question, a quote from some previous argument between these two.

"If you say while there's life there's hope again I will mock you. I'm the half-Lightbot here, Omega, not you."

"Excuse me?"

"Yes, X?" Omega was the first to respond, perhaps somewhat apologetic. He and Alpha had the time to waste: X did not.

"I died?"

"No. Robot masters don't meet all the criteria for a living organism. We've got two of the three, though, while viruses only meet one. So as Rock wasn't alive he couldn't technically die. Calling it death works as a metaphor, though."

"If…"

"Look. If you want to know how it works I'll start giving you some physics classes when you have a millennium to kill. Reincarnation is a good description, same as death. In absolute terms, nothing ceases to be, period. That would require time that wasn't just an optical illusion. Weren't you here about something _other than_ the Grand Dis-unified Theory?"

That one, X had to admit, was definitely his own fault. It wasn't Omega's fault if he answered the questions X asked and they were the wrong ones. "Why didn't you… finish building me until seventy years after the Cataclysm?"

"Because I was busy. Time being an illusion doesn't mean I don't have to pretend to buy into it in order to stay in the same frame of reference as the rest of you. It took me that long to get this set up." 'This,' the arm wave indicated, was the EMS. "At first we had to pull the weight of the world as well as keep her locked up, then I finally managed to get her into harness and start cleaning up the mess she made." The orb flared angrily. "Poetic justice."

"She's alive in there?" The alien that had almost destroyed the human race and rendered earth lifeless was alive in there? And trying to break out?

"Yes."

"So you put me into the capsule and planted me for Dr. Cain to find?"

"…Good short version. Let's go with it."

"And all of you were here?" That was what X had realized. The EMS… was an incredibly complex system. Incredibly _vital_. The first and second laws… with the world's survival at stake, no one would have hesitated to force the robot master to let themselves be taken apart, the way Dr. Light had feared X would be. "The chips they used were your chips, weren't they?"

"Robot master chips were very, very expensive and hard to make. I stole all of them I could get my hands on to use in the backup stations so that they'd be rebuilt to keep fighting Slur. The rest got destroyed during the fights. And it's not 'they.' I built this place."

"But you know how to make them?"

"Of course."

"Then why?"

"Why what now?" Omega was lost.

"Opportunity cost, X. You're counting the people that died because I let the world think the knowledge of how to build robot masters was lost. You're not counting the people that didn't."

"What do you mean?" X was lost now, but Omega, judging from his sigh, seemed to have understood perfectly.

"There are more people alive now than there would be if we hadn't been lost to time, and they're a lot better off. The fact the humans had to go into radioactive and other dangerous areas killed a lot of them, yes. But far fewer than war would have."

"War? There hasn't been a war since the Cataclysm."

"Yes. Because they couldn't afford the deaths. But if they weren't dying since we were their hands? If they weren't the ones to die in a war? If they were starving and someone else wasn't since they just needed energy, energy that could have gone to helping grow food? If it became robots against robots or robots killing humans, never them dirtying their hands, the servants carrying the blame for their master's orders? If we had been there to shelter them from the costs of their actions, all the sin would have fallen upon us, or that's what they would have thought without the ability to realize how many would have lived if it had been necessary _not_ to go to war instead of 'necessary' to. Or some of the smart ones might have and hated us more for it. You don't believe that would have happened. It would have, I'm afraid. You're refusing to accept that because you refuse to accept the fact horrible things happen and that sometimes it's not good to help people. In fact, it's not a good thing as a default. The issue is which does less _total_ damage, letting them control their own lives and suffer something or keeping them from suffering an evil at the cost of their growth and independence."

"You're right, I don't understand how you can think that way."

"Would you, if you could do that day over again, do it differently?"

"Of…" X had to freeze, then. What could he have done differently? Gone himself? He'd had no training! Told Ceta not to go? She would have refused. Innocent lives were on the line, and if there was a bomb threat then she and Sigma were the best choices of who to send, and losing Sigma in Ceta's place was no improvement. If he'd made her stay home people would have died, other people, innocent people. She'd have rather died in their place, just like X would prefer himself dying to others. That was why he'd tried to perform that dangerous examination of himself. That was why he'd joined the hunters. The same reason she had helped found them. "I'd have told her I loved her." They'd been so busy that he hadn't even seen her that day.

"I told them that, and I told them what would happen." Turning to face the orb, Blues contemplatively remarked that, "everyone misses the points of Greek tragedies. Fate isn't a compulsion, it's a forecast. Oedipus wasn't compelled to kill his father and marry his mother. He killed this guy who he met in the middle of nowhere because he was a bastard and then was awarded the hand of his mother after saving the city from a sphinx while he had no idea it was her. Everyone made those decisions of their own free will. It didn't happen despite their actions, it happened because of their actions in attempting to avoid it. It's quite hard for an individual to override the wills of an entire planet, let alone the universe. The same thing that made her, of her own free will, try to destroy humanity was the same thing that caused her attempt to come so very close to succeeding. If they hadn't been that sort of species, they would have made robot masters that were strong enough to oppose her. Instead, they were afraid of us and did their best to cripple us. So, if humanity had been rational and non-racist enough to have created children capable of defending it, Slur wouldn't have attacked in the first place and they wouldn't have needed those defenders. However, there was a spark of honesty in them, and it turned out to be their saving grace."

The orb's whirling seemed to indicate some response, and it was countered. "Yes, he only changed his mind because of Rock. You do realize that you're making my point for me? Duo, who you admire so much, felt that it was okay to leave this place in his hands for a _reason."_

"And what caused her to try to destroy them would have caused me to."

"Not exactly the same reasons, but the same root cause," Blues agreed with Omega.

"I still don't get why you wanted to oppose that."

"Rock." Blues sighed. "And others. Yes, you and Slur are right. They're going to destroy themselves eventually, and you make a very good case that it's wrong to prolong their agony. Yet there's a better reason that it's the right thing to do."

"While there's life there's hope? We both know that they're not capable of evolving beyond their animal natures."

"And that matters why? I'm doing it for our sake, not for their sake. Messed up as they are, genocidal as they are, they're our parents. Or cute little sisters, in some cases. They have to try. I don't, but I'm in it for their sake." The sakes of the robot masters that slept, or didn't, all around them. "They refuse to give up on them."

"Even my brothers?"

"Omega, they put up with Albert until the end. He was a total raving nutjob when he was off his medication, when he was on he couldn't think worth a damn and it cost them so many losses. Still, he was _their_ raving nutjob."

Omega sighed, shaking his head, and X knew this was Dr. Wily they were talking about and it didn't quite compute that there was so much regret at his loss.

"You would have killed him the instant you woke up," in the history that didn't happen.

"I know, he would have been the only one capable of stopping me, once Forte tied him down and put him on a medication IV to get the file locations out of him at least." Omega looked at him warily. "Are you _sure_ you don't hack people's minds without permission?"

"See? This is why I spent that long learning how to play chess. I don't have to read your mind if I know how you think, Omega. I am _the_ robot master. I was designed to figure out how to think, and then they refined that to get the rest of them. Even you are less rational than I am. For one thing, you're refusing to admit that you're going to let X die, just as I did Rock."

"Be silent." Not a yell or a growl, but equally as threatening.

"There's no point in saying anything to someone who refuses to listen, so I think I will bail. Places to be, collateral damage to minimize. Same old, same old."

"Dr.?" A hesitant voice said quietly.

Walking to the other side of the statue, Blues spoke a few more quiet words. X didn't tune his microphones in to the conversation. It wasn't for his ears and he recognized that tone.

Omega laughed just a little. "Dr. Smith, hah. He would adopt anything that moved, as hard as he tried to fight it. He says I have no right to talk about free will since I was just handed it on a silver platter. Still, he was programmed. He does have the laws. No matter how good he is at getting around them, at rendering them useless, they still remain."

Reminded he was here, X whirled to face him. "What does he mean, you're going to let me die? And Zero?"

"It would take ages to explain and it's all nonsense anyway. I'm not going to bother."

X could see the flashes of two teleporting out. No help there. "Correct me if I'm wrong enough that it matters. Dr. Wily used an alien energy to make this virus that was in Sigma and now is in the mavericks in order to kill Megaman, Protoman and an alien? Duo and then Slur came to destroy it, Slur also wanted to destroy humanity. You decided not to fight Slur, or Megaman, or Protoman."

"Dr. Wily wanted to destroy humanity. He knew it was necessary, as hard as he fought to place robot masters in control to protect them, the world, and humanity itself. The virus was mostly to kill humans, I only said that I _needed_ it to kill you three." Humans were easy to kill, Omega wouldn't need the virus. "He didn't want Alpha dead even at his farthest gone. Alpha was his reason to fight, just like Ceta is yours."

His child. "What about Sigma?"

"I removed his personality from his body, programming and nanites both, since you asked me to save him. He could fight it because of you, and it didn't want to risk him realizing something was wrong and telling you before it was ready. He was its unknowing carrier since he saved me, and when I rescued him it pretended to be him as it would have if you hadn't given him that strength."

"Gave him strength?"

"Love is not considered the greatest force in existence, bar none, without reason. Note that I said love, and not lust. The human sex drive is just a subcategory, like gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and so on."

"You're saying that love is the Grand Unified Theory." During 19XX, scientists had wanted to find a single law of physics from with all others were derived. They'd managed to narrow it down to four and find evidence it was possible to find the common thread in three of the four before having to give up until someone developed the technology they'd need to find the particles theorized to be causing gravity. Then teleportation had been discovered and they still had no clue how that worked.

"Grand Dis-unified Theory. And love is a very bad description, but like calling what the virus uses evil energy, it just will have to work until you evolve to the point of being able to comprehend the reality. Which you will not be doing anytime soon."

"Was that what you meant when you said I would have to die in order to save Sigma from the virus?"

"It's not good versus evil. It's two separated categories. Matter and anti-matter are like one and negative one: they re-merge and there will be nothing physical once again. The energy in question is the manifestation of a mental state that's the opposite of what is good for this plane of reality. On the other hand, they'd sound alarm bells if you ended up there. I really don't know how he manages to maintain both states without them reacting with each other and destroying him."

"That wasn't answering the question."

"And that was your answer." That Omega wasn't going to answer it, didn't want to help.

"We need to get rid of it. We can't release Slur to do it," the orb became very excited at this, "because she'll kill the humans and everyone who's infected, so there's no point." It wouldn't help the situation at all. "If the virus is stopped will she go back to sleep?"

"You can't stop the virus."

"No, I think I can. How?"

"Kill Zero."

X froze.

"As I said, you can't."

"I have to." The laughter that spilled out of his mouth was a little hysterical. "I'm Megaman, I can do anything!"

"Except stop Slur." Omega, unimpressed, pointed at the orb.

"I'm X, then. You said that Zero wouldn't stay dead." He had to find a way: better a scientist than a hero for that. Better to be himself than a ghost.

"You would not see him until after you had died, and he would not recognize you." As X's eyes widened, Omega continued, "and humanity's fate would be unaltered. You wouldn't even buy them time. When the Cataclysm ceases to threaten them, than if the virus doesn't they will turn on themselves. They evolved constantly threatened. They 'know' on the instinctive level that there is a threat and if there isn't one they will _make _one."

"You think I can just sit back and do nothing while an entire species is wiped out? And Rho was a reploid!"

"And he will be again. Don't consider my skill at taking care of my children inferior to Alpha's."

"It's your weapon!"

"Forged by a human to be his own race's means of assisted suicide. All Alpha could do was save me from being brainwashed into being its tool the same way I saved Sigma."

"I refuse to believe there is no hope."

Omega was silent. He couldn't tell X that there was none. There was a hope, he just was refusing to let X find it or use it.

X really was angry now. "Who do you and Blues think you are? Alpha and Omega, beginning and end? The be all and end all? Why not just call yourself gods? That was the title of a god."

"Blame Wily. Or destiny."

So it wasn't just one madman's arrogance? "Rock. 'Upon this rock I will build my church.' The god who had that title changed his most important follower's name to one meaning that."

"Blame Light."

"X. Used by illiterate people to sign documents: a name that can mean any one's, a symbol that can mean anything. The random variable. The opposite of the solidity of rock. Freedom and hope in the place of faith."

"Again, Light." Omega was watching him carefully now. He really didn't know how to guard emotions, how to keep someone else from reading him. Of course, if he only interacted with someone that good at it there wasn't much point in learning it unless he was going to master it.

"Also, x-out. Erasing something. Omega, the end. On the other hand, the first two robot masters had words for foundation and beginning."

"Ah, destiny." Damn stupid destiny.

"Humans named us that. The beginning of their end, the world they wanted to build and wiping away their mistakes to leave room for something new."

"If I didn't know this was the first time you've talked about this with him in either lifetime I would swear otherwise." Please stop being annoying. Yet he wasn't being stupid. "You're sounding far too much like him."

"Lament. A song of sadness and loss. Mourning at the passing of a loved one. Blues, the music of a repressed people containing their suffering and the wisdom and love they found in live despite it."

"There's more to it than that." That was an attempt to get X to ask what, to sidetrack him. He was on to something. He had no idea _what_, but he was.

"Rock, music that is…" X paused. "Hard to describe, but strong music, music that wants change but is sure that change is possible."

"The sixties ended, he died, and neither learns from this."

"Zero. Emptiness. A placeholder, just like X. Lion's the king of beasts, like robot master controlled non-sentient robots."

"Is there a point to this or are you just brainstorming aloud? I'm really getting bored now. Is there anything that I will actually need to stay awake for or should I just go back to sleep?"

"You defined Slur's name before you told it to me."

Omega might be fast at logic, but he had to pause now. He wasn't fast in something as inherently evil to a logical being as lying, much less lying effectively.

"Wily, clever, slightly amoral but not necessarily evil. Using questionable means to achieve a questionable goal. Light. Burns away the darkness and reveals truth."

Omega stayed watchfully silent until the mention of truth merited a snort. X really wanted to find out about his family, how they differed from the legends, but not now.

"Omega Wily. The end of the need to be wily. X Light. The removal of light?" That guess was wrong. "Or is it mysterious light? A light that can be any sort of light?"

Actually, Omega trying to deceive him and failing so badly was far better than him trying to be helpful. He wanted X to make an error so he could use that to convince him this was the wrong tree. Omega strongly felt that it was a very wrong tree. Yet no other option would work. The only barrier to this one working was Omega's refusal to contemplate it. Blues seemed to think it would work, or at least X thought that was what he had meant. So there had to be a way. X simply would not let there not be one.

"A light that can burn away the darkness? You said I could become that."

"You already are. Have you changed your mind about destroying Zero?" Factually true, yet still a clear attempt to mislead.

"Zero isn't darkness. Just space, just absence. Space that darkness can exist in if there isn't light there."

"Do you have any idea what you're suggesting?"

"No, but you seem to. What am I suggesting?" X just had to grin slightly.

Omega scowled at being caught like that.

"Tell me."

"Zero can't destroy it. Its natural home is inside him, it's a symbiotic relationship at this point because Dr. Cain had no idea what he was dealing with. It would take at least a century for him to remove it, and if it's destroyed everywhere but inside him then it will just infect a single new vessel to start a new plague. However, Dr. Light gave you the ability to redesign yourself and your nanites. If you downloaded yourself into him, then since he doesn't want to hurt you the virus within him can't in its dormant state. You could analyze it and become a vaccine, destroying it within him and copying its ability to spread to seek out other victims of the virus to cure and protect from it."

"This would work?"

"You wouldn't be able to return to your body. You would end up very incompatible very quickly, and simply too high-level to exist in such small processor capacity without sacrificing the abilities you need. Electricity and a small number of free-floating nanites can't fight or hug someone, X. But you could help them fight, stay with them and let them know you are there for them." Omega was starting to think perhaps this wasn't all that terrible. "You would be the first of a new kind, unless someone has beaten you to it yet again."

"I have infinite potential. I can be anything I want to."

"So that's what Blues meant when he said that you would die and become an entity capable of network management on our levels but I would never abandon you. I think he phrases things in terms of mutual contradictions just to force people to give their brains a workout." There was one more thing that had to be overcome. "You're not going to be very good at staying cohesive. After the initial effort, you won't have more than a few years of conscious human frame of reference time before you become too incompatible with it. You could always go to sleep, but if that's not an option and you don't want to die and not come back from it you will need an anchor."

"An anchor?"

Omega was running calculations, some of them on what X would think of this. "I never really had a reason to be. The Cataclysm was my purpose and while I can't be angry that Blues gave me the chance to reject it, there is a difference between rejecting a destiny and finding something you want to become, someone you wish to be. Zero has that, he has a goal… I think I shall choose to be Zero."

Suddenly, there Zero was, although for what given value of being Zero or anything like that X really had no idea. This was Zero, Zero who was alive and going to live. "X, just kill me, damn it! It means nothing, I am nothing."

Omega had ended and Zero shouted that his name was his true nature. "Don't say that, Zero."

"You did say it, and it's true. You won't be independent anymore. You'll just be cleaning up my messes and since I'm going to be telling you who you are I could do anything to you, and so much of it's automatic that you'll end up who I want you to be. No."

"The person you want me to be, the person you believe I am, is someone you're willing to protect with your life no matter what. And I'm just as determined to save you, Zero. So I have no problem with you saving my restore files for me. The person you want to save is me. You're not going to be the one to destroy me by turning me into someone I'm not. I wouldn't have anyone else even if that was an option."

Zero was struck silent, touched and wanting to say that he wasn't worthy but unwilling to say that X was wrong when he knew, knew, despite all the lies about himself that he had believed, that X was right. "You…" were the one to believe in me, to restore my faith. I would never corrupt your files when you restored mine.

X reached down and took Zero's hand. "I have no idea how to transfer myself. I didn't even know it was possible. Do we need a cable?"

"Not really, but it's safer that way. I have some."

X nodded: let's do this. Zero took X's other hand, and then, after a deep breath, his hair swept around them, a halo, the mane of a king, and X's eyes closed to focus on monitoring the data transfer process. Signals flew along a myriad of connections, his programming and the nanites that existed in symbiosis with it, his mind and his soul flowing into their new home.

When it was done he opened his eyes (he had no real eyes anymore, but that was what it was like) and there was light.

* * *

It's the end of the end: all over bar the epilogue. I will try to think of fun things to put in there to reward the suffering of anyone who sticks with this for that long.


	12. First Hour of the Rest of Their Lives

_Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman in any variety or anything else Capcom owns. Please don't sue, no infringement intended and no money made._

_The end, scenelets. There may be more, but I'll mark this as complete for now._

_Why has ff . net suddenly deleted all the dividers I had between ANs and the actual chapters?! _

* * *

This wasn't his room. He was standing up, not in his recharge capsule (he hadn't had the time to waste on sleep in a bed in ages). This wasn't home, this was a battlefield, and he had a brief moment of panic as he tried to figure out what was going on. It couldn't be a dream, Dad (X nowadays, he had to remember that) hadn't been able to figure out how to build that into them.

Still, he heard his father's voice, only not exactly, again. He just knew that X was glad he was okay, and that things were going to be fine, and that he was loved. That was nice, certainly, but what on earth was going on?

There were bodies.

Human bodies, they were in some sort of command center. Where was the Irregular? The weapons were busters, hunter standard issue from the effects, and… a beam saber?

He wanted his father here, to hold him and to tell him what was obvious wasn't true. He wasn't here, and yet Sigma felt like he was being held, that it was okay for him to be in shock for a bit, it was understandable and things would be taken care of. It wasn't his fault, and he would have the luxury of time to grieve.

Innocent people.

He should be figuring out what was going on and dealing with it, he clearly wasn't the only one here who had just woken up to this and that was his job.

No, right now his job was to calm down, be okay. If he was frantic everyone would be even more panicked, after all. It's okay, Sigma. Everything's going to be fine. It was horrible, but it's over.

What was going on? How could he have…

It wasn't you. You fought it for a very long time without even knowing and I'm proud of you.

He wanted to crawl into his father's arms, although he was far too big for that in this body (the test models had been smaller, partly to save money). He wanted this to be a bad dream, for X to make it go away.

X was so very sorry that he couldn't do that for him. Couldn't erase this. Couldn't tell him where he was so Sigma could join him.

Father?

Sigma felt held as he cried, although there would never be those arms that seemed fragile yet were stronger than titanium to shelter him ever again.

* * *

This, this was strange. If it weren't for X's calmness, a rock in a storm, he might be losing himself in all these selves. He had to find them, teleport the link nanites there since reploids, let alone original androids, hadn't been designed for that, and then try to…

They needed him, though: that was what kept him, and X too, going. They were children in need, his children, which was a really strange idea for him but not for what remained of Omega and Lion. They were scared, scared as he'd been after he'd been woken up for the first time and told what he'd done unknowingly. He was erasing their memories of it: hopefully they'd all think that was another virus effect. They didn't deserve to suffer that guilt.

Maybe a metaphor was brushing hair? Or his hair, yeah. Just running a brush through it until it was straight instead of hairs criss-crossing: no tangles, no pulling. Just gentle putting in order. X could cure the virus, unlike him, but he couldn't link to their minds deeply enough to heal them. He could talk to them though, at least.

Damn him. Damn Wily, damn everything that had done this to General Sigma, the man, reploid, person that had saved Zero's life and given him a purpose and hope of atonement.

Even the ones that had hated him, though, cried with relief when he set them straight. He could feel their hate, why they had hated him, the pain it stemmed from, and he really couldn't keep them from finding what they wanted to know: did he suffer? Did he suffer for what he had done to their loved ones? He did, and for most of them that knowledge was enough, to know that at least there was justice, even if they didn't apologize for hating him because they'd thought he hadn't really cared about his crimes. Of course he had. He would have to really be a monster not to. Really be that demon.

He wasn't, he knew that, alright X? Still, it was so horrible that this had happened to them.

It was, yes.

He had X here, and he couldn't afford to only focus on him, or he might warp him. He'd hated being alone in his heart, this was what he was built for (besides destruction). To guide, to build in destruction's wake. Or was that Omega? X and Dr. Cain had installed his modern OS so that he could be whoever he wanted.

He wanted to help them. So that worked.

Oh, Yggdrasil was _here_? Alpha-Blues really had gotten him somewhere safe (of course he would). Most of the others had no idea why there was someone in their head but weren't questioning their rescue. Yggdrasil knew about the theory, although Blues couldn't link to his creation (Dr. Smith. Ha. He had to agree with Omega, calling himself that when faking human: now that was Blues all over.) since he was an android, not a robot master. Incompatible. Still, Kalinka had been incompatible, and she'd still been… something very Bluesish to him. Don't worry about it. Of course he doesn't love you less because of it.

Racism is a human thing, Zero began to 'say' before stopping himself. So many conversations at once were work to juggle, but it was worrying how easily that had been thought of, such a natural and obvious truth. It was true, though. Something had to be done to protect his children from that and humanity from itself.

At least he had a lot of time to think now. X too. They'd figure something out.

* * *

It had been a century, he'd made a lot of progress on the mental aspects, at least, what with _having_ to share a lot of his thoughts. He could say that he loved people, but touch was still hard, still sent alarms ringing. Not the programming's fault, not directly. He'd been meant to have no personality and hence no personal space, after all. But when they'd come up to him it had often been to violate not only that space but his personality itself. Someone, especially 'family' coming too close made him remember what had happened before. Nonsense, but he'd learned that lesson well and now had to unlearn it.

Yggdrasil was, well. The android that X had thought Zero was, the Cossack family's creation. His family's, really. The closest thing Kalinka would have to a child. X was his half-brother, he had robot masters galore to look after, but still.

Robot masters had been created to look after less intelligent robots, it was instinct beyond the laws to look after cute little kids. So sue him.

At least he'd managed to tell this one he loved him from the start.

So that was why he made such an effort to actually place his arms around 'Sil when the child hugged him, even though they shook just a fraction with the reflexive desire to push him away. He could have just shut off motor functions, stood there, let 'Sil, but the kid wanted to know that Blues was willing to make the effort for this: that it wasn't just something he endured until it was over.

The problem with being the way he was, or one of them, was that he couldn't love another of his own kind. They were all his children. Well, that was why X and Omega had died virgins. 'Sil was his child, of course he was, but because he had built him, not because he was a robot and therefore Blues had to take care of him on the most basic level, like it or not. Kalinka had been… a possibility. A potential, a bud killed before it could bloom. They'd never loved each other: a crush and a desire, seeds that could have grown.

'Sil was the child they would have had if their dreams had been able to withstand reality. Not a human Kalinka related to far more, not a robot master shaped by Blues' thought patterns. A blank slate, a new person, a hope for the future. Their hope.

Dr. Cossack had wondered why their designs had been in browns and greens. There had been enough red and gold, blood and money, distorting their lives.

He wondered what Zero, and maybe X, had said to the kid, although that was private. Either way, it was good to see him smile without it being a question. Roll had practically raised his own son… He told the drama queen irritatedly to go back to sleep, damn it. The evil energy was gone and he wanted some damn breathing room, time he didn't have to devote to handling her cleanup.

'Sil was falling asleep in his arms (only android left besides Zero, of course Zero needed him to help with this large a project), and Blues didn't freeze so he could stay there unshaken by trembling arms. He held him tight, he choose to hold him. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but then so many important things weren't.

He'd waited to see that Rock would be okay, stood vigil even though Rock had never known he had been there since he'd had to flee his personal boogyman. 'Sil hadn't been touched in all this, but still. Still.

He'd held Kalinka twice to save her. The third time he'd had to let her go.

The world, when the window of this seemingly long-wrecked orbital rotated to show it, looked no worse than it had yesterday: his scanners couldn't detect a significant improvement either, other than the lack of that annoying stuff.

Yet more evidence that the important things were in people's heads.

'Sil was smiling, X and Zero were bustling about, Ring was demonstrating his strategic abilities and Shadow was borrowing Blues' enigmatic bastard card to keep people's attention on Dr. Lament's impact on this and their eyes away from the right directions until X and Zero finished and decided what cover story to go with. If they said they wanted the truth he'd fold his arms at them.

Well, maybe their children did have a right to know. Blues' had found out eventually.

He supposed he'd just let them have to make their choices and pay their prices. He'd set them free ages ago, anyway. The instant he'd woken Omega up, the instant he'd let Rock go back to his home.

He hoped 'Sil did equally well, only without the trauma. He had enough to deal with, what with having an emotional cripple for a father. Oh well.

Give it another century. 'Sil was willing to wait.


End file.
